


Ella, Interrupted

by emynii, ObliObla



Series: Nia & Obli's Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Post s02e014: Candy Morningstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25812391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emynii/pseuds/emynii, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: A supremely bad month leads Ella to wonder if some problems aren’t as in the past as she had hoped.
Relationships: Ella Lopez & Lucifer Morningstar, John Constantine & Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Series: Nia & Obli's Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740652
Comments: 53
Kudos: 167





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Second fill for our [Bad Things Happen Bingo card.](https://obliobla.tumblr.com/post/617590261904769024/here-is-your-card-for-bad-things-happen-bingo)
> 
> Prompt to be revealed later 😈

_God._ Life was just so...much sometimes. Ella reached for the wine bottle on the coffee table and poured another glass. She lay back against a plushy porg and grabbed for the remote, turning off the tv. Her rewatch of Stargate SG-1 was completely failing to hold her attention for the third night running.

“Ugh,” she told her bookshelves, her stuffed animals, the ridiculously long but only partially completed fourth doctor-esque scarf draped over a chair. “Ugh,” she told the empty fish tank—poor Marvin had passed some weeks ago—before downing half the glass and staring up at the ceiling.

It wasn’t a specific case or anything. There wasn’t _really_ anything wrong at work or with family. Everything was mostly _fine,_ just… She shook her head, rucking her hair up against the stuffed porg’s flat face. She was just tired. She hadn’t been sleeping well the past few months. Chloe had been _poisoned,_ and Lucifer—the dumbass—had run off, and now he was back. And Neal in the lab was being a pain, and Ricardo was still whining about her and Dan coming by his shop _even_ though _he_ was the one who had held a gun on them, and—

She was just tired, was all.

She finished her wine, got a crick in her neck, and sat up. “Ow.” She turned the tv back on and browsed Netflix, then got frustrated and turned it off. She got up and wandered into the kitchen, opening drawers, closing drawers, hungry but not. She returned to the living room and poked at the scarf—she really needed to finish it but _ugh._ She perused her bookshelves, pulling books out, putting them back away. She stared at the empty tank, wondering if she should get another fish. Maybe two this time, so they wouldn’t be so alone. She flopped back onto the couch and sighed loudly. Nothing, nothing, nothing...

Hey, now _there_ was an idea.

Crammed into the lower shelf of one of the bookcases was a haphazard pile of boxes. _Settlers of Catan,_ _Risk,_ and a badly-abused, barely-used chess set formed the base of the stack. _Munchkin_ and half of its expansions were slowly sliding down one side. There was a Lovecraft based game Ella hadn’t actually opened yet slotted next to _Lord of the Rings_ themed _Trivial Pursuit,_ a Trekkie version of _Clue_ called _Picardo,_ and a backgammon board she swore had come with the apartment. 

She dragged herself off the couch and crouched down next to the shelf, knocking a layer of dust off the games. She hadn’t had anyone over for a while. She shoved past _Boggle_ and _Uno,_ looking for something she could play by herself, grieving the basic playing cards and poker chips she could no longer let herself own. This was pointless, wasn’t it? Why would she even _have_ a board game that could be played solo anyway? She shook her head and rolled her eyes, preparing to stand, when a wide, plain cardboard box shoved into a corner caught her eye. She slid it out carefully and opened it.

Unlike most of the other games in Ella’s collection, it had very few pieces. In fact, the box was empty except for an irregularly shaped board and a flat, roughly triangular piece of stone with a round hole near the center. Hag stones, Briar had called them, when she’d given Ella the box. It was, essentially, a Ouija board, but the board was hand carved driftwood, the English letters were supplemented with a variety of alchemical symbols as well as the customary _yes_ and _no,_ and the planchette was green translucent stone with a natural hole in it.

Briar had grown up in some kind of commune upstate, but she was really cool and always had the hookup at ComicCon. When she’d given Ella the board she’d said something about ancient Sumerian texts—when she wasn’t designing tarot cards and growing her own pot, she was a history postgrad at UCLA—but all Ella needed to know now was that it was pretty and she was bored out of her mind

She cleared off a space on the coffee table and laid the board down, the planchette resting on top. She poured another glass of wine and sipped it as she stared at the board. Now what. Despite the fears of her parents’ friends when she was a kid, she didn’t really believe Ouija boards _did_ anything; they were owned by Hasbro for crying out loud. But it didn’t have to be real to be fun, so she took a deep breath and set her hands on two corners of the stone.

Nothing happened. Lame.

The few times she’d done this before had been at sleepovers with lots of girls, lots of laughing, staying up too late with the lights off and candles flickering. Maybe all she needed to make this not suck was a better ambiance. She got up again and retrieved a few dusty candles from a shelf and set them on the coffee table. She went to the kitchen to get the lighter, grabbing a wine cooler on her way back. The lighter sputtered out, so she shook it, grumbling. Finally it caught, and she lit the candles. She shut the lights off and settled in front of the Ouija board again, picking up her previously forgotten glass of wine. A flick of a remote, and dark instrumental video game music from the last century emanated from the surround-sound tv speakers. Ambiance achieved, Ella turned her attention back to the board.

Nothing, again. Damn.

She finished the glass and reached for the bottle to refill it, finding it empty. She checked her phone for messages, then, realizing they were all work related, tossed it away. She poked the porg’s broad belly for inspiration. She flopped back into the couch cushions dramatically, not once, but twice. She picked up the rock planchette and brought it up to her eye, staring through it at the tv. Briar had said something about hag stones being seeing stones, ways to view the afterlife. But she didn’t see Heaven, and she didn’t see Hell. She set it back down and opened the wine cooler.

Halfway through the wine cooler, she grabbed the planchette again, setting it down a little hard against the symbols. Maybe she was doing this wrong. She couldn’t just wait for the universe to talk to her; maybe she had to talk to _it_ first. She concentrated—hands a little unsteady—and spelled out on the carved letters

_anyone there_

Nothing. Third time _not_ the charm. She sighed, going back for another drink, but her fingertip dragged too hard against a still rough part of the wood and scraped a narrow line of red across her pinky.

“Ow!” she squeaked, sticking her finger into her mouth by instinct, tasting dust and salt and iron as she cleaned the blood away. She held her finger closer to a candle to look at the cut. It was small and had already stopped bleeding. Shaking her head, she returned to the planchette, giving it up as a bad job. Nothing was going to happen. It was silly to believe, even for a moment, that a little toy could do anything like—

The green stone moved under her fingers, and everything froze. Well, everything except the planchette, which was still slowly drifting across the surface of the wood. She meant to pull her hand away, but some part of her—the part that watched horror movies late at night, the part that went on sketchy night hikes up in the hills looking for haunted picnic tables, the part that tested blood all day and looked at dead bodies without blinking—held on. Slowly, _slowly_ it moved across letters, stopping briefly at several, spelling out words.

_im here who are you_

Ella blinked, blinked again. There was no air in the room—hadn’t been since the planchette moved on its own. Everything was holding on. Even the candle flames seemed frozen, waiting for her response, slowly marked out by trembling hands.

_ella_

She bit her lip, hoping nothing else would happen, hoping something else would happen.

_hi ella_

She blinked.

_thats a nice name im collin_

Ella frowned down at the board. Before, when she was a kid, there had been Ray-Ray. Her imaginary friend. Her imaginary _ghost_ friend. But Ray-Ray wasn’t real, right? A decade of meds, college, the gambling and partying in her twenties, more meds...she _knew_ Ray-Ray wasn’t real. And yet… 

_are you a ghost_

Ella stared down at her hands, at the planchette underneath them, at the board underneath _them._ There was a moment, two, where she almost managed to convince herself she had been imagining things. But then, still so, so slowly, the triangle of stone moved.

_Yes_

Ella took another drink, daring to remove one of her hands from the planchette. What was she even supposed to say to that? _What’s it like being a ghost? Is it boring when you’re dead?_ She huffed out a breath and returned both hands to the stone.

_so mr ghost_

_Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it_.

_how do you boo_

_What the hell, Ella?_ she asked herself, but the planchette was already moving, back and forth in a motion that should have been disturbing but only made her lean further over the board.

_hahaha good one ella_

The edge of her lip curled up, and she made to respond before Collin added

_im okay but its lonely here sometimes_

“Aww,” Ella said, wishing she could hug the air. She returned to the planchette instead. 

_im here to talk_

She frowned and drew out her longest sentence yet, feeling less awkward by the moment.

_im not even dead and sometimes i feel like a ghost_

She blinked back sudden tears, grabbing for her drink. Everything was still for a moment, and she wondered if even a disembodied spirit had abandoned her before Collin replied.

_im sure you have friends you seem so nice_

Ella sniffed. She hovered over the _yes_ before spelling out another sentence.

_they all have their own drama i dont want to add to it_

There was a longer pause this time, and Ella could almost feel Collin in the room with her. _Was_ he in the room with her? She didn’t know how ghosts worked. She finished her drink, watching the board, fingertips pressed tight to the planchette. And then her ghost spoke.

_well ill be your friend_

A tear slipped down Ella’s cheek, and her head was beginning to ache, her eyelids drooping.

_im getting tired_

She blinked back more tears.

_maybe we could talk tomorrow_

Collin responded, but Ella was too exhausted to tell what he was saying, her hands slipping off the planchette. Just a nap. She’d just take a quick nap, and they could talk more.

She was asleep before her head hit the cushion.

* * *

“Oww,” Ella mumbled into the couch cushion as she swam back to consciousness. Her head was _killing_ her. She sat up slowly and rubbed at her forehead, looking around at the living room, bathed in early morning light. She must have drank more than she thought. 

She dug around in the couch for her phone. Last night had been...weird. She remembered getting out the Ouija board, but the coffee table was empty now. The candles she remembered getting out were gone too. Had she put them away before she passed out, or had all of it been a super weird dream?

Her fingers hit the plastic edge of her Tardis phone case. There. She pulled it out and clicked the screen on. “Oh, no, I’m going to be late,” she muttered to herself, leaping off the couch to hurry to the bathroom, everything else forgotten.

Ella was only ten minutes late to work, and thankfully, no one seemed to have noticed. She shoved her jacket and bag in a corner, jammed her ear buds into her ears, and started in on the ever-increasing backlog. No matter how fast she worked, she was never entirely caught up. Budget cuts in favor of the flashier aspects of policing meant they tended to be understaffed, and Ella ended up doing the job of multiple people. Yousef from burglary had sent over case notes, and she was supposed to review them, so she did that first. Then there was DNA evidence to coordinate with the right department, fingerprints to analyze and send off, hair samples and trace evidence to send to spectroscopy, reports to file…

“Hey, Ella, we caught a case,” Dan threw through the open lab door.

Right, so. Where did she put her kit?

Ella drove over with CSU, still running through work in her head. There was a paper on a new method of blood spatter analysis she needed to read, a consult on a case down in San Diego, and a half-inch stack of paperwork to finish when she got back.

The scene she arrived at was a double homicide with a side of missing murder weapon. A golf club, probably, she determined, before rattling off orders to a half dozen CSIs and getting a ride back with Chloe—Lucifer wasn’t in yet, and she was clearly worried.

The conversation on the way back was mostly work-related, bouncing ideas back and forth, but shifted—like it always seemed to—towards Lucifer. “It’s just been a weird couple of months,” Chloe told her as they exited the car. “We’ll be okay, though,” she added before they both returned to the grind.

Shutting the door to her lab, Ella turned and found another stack of papers on her table with a post-it note from Hector in Major Crimes that said, _Urgent!!!_ She sighed and dropped her bag. Chloe’s murder was going to have to wait until later. A cup of coffee and a granola bar from the vending machine—she had worked through lunch again—and she was finishing up some slides, comparing the new vics’ head wounds with the shapes of irons and putters and wedges. She settled down with the playlist Lucifer had sent her last week and started making her way through the new case for homicide. Her head still hurt, so she took an excedrin and got another cup of coffee. She got halfway through it before her stomach started rumbling. She glanced at the time. 5:42. Good enough for today. 

She collected her jacket and bag and prepared to get stuck in rush-hour traffic. An hour later she stumbled inside her apartment, stifling a yawn. Leftover Chinese takeout, a—non-alcoholic—drink, and a Stargate binge to decompress, and she was set.

_Mondays._

But a couple of episodes and the rest of a bag of potato chips later, her gaze started drifting to the stack of board games. She definitely had _not_ talked to a ghost last night—definitely not—but it had been nice, hadn’t it? To talk to someone who didn’t want anything from her? The episodes got boring again, and she clicked the tv off, getting up and retrieving the Ouija board.

She set the board on the coffee table again, the planchette resting on top, and frowned down at it. She thought about getting out candles, putting on some music, turning the lights off, but instead she sat down on the couch and pressed her fingers to the stone.

 _collin_ _are you there_

Nothing. Of course. Did she really expect this to work?

Rolling her eyes at her weird hope, she shoved the board and the planchette back into the box and slotted it into the bookshelf. It was still fairly early, but she’d been tired all day. Her head had finally stopped hurting, but nothing seemed remotely interesting. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and crawled into bed. An hour later, when her brain finally calmed down a little, after opening and closing Wobble a dozen times and scrolling on Tumblr until the app crashed, she put her phone on her bedside table and fell asleep.

* * *

The rest of the week was more of the same. A different crime scene—this one for Major Crimes, nasty stuff. Analysis. Fingerprints. Missing lunch again. _Paperwork._ Getting home late and eating something quick, cheap, and majorly unhealthy before sleeping like garbage. By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, her head had started hurting again—probably from missing lunch several days in a row. She took an excedrin and had a cup of coffee. Two. Three. She picked up another pile of paperwork. She blinked. Yousef from Burglary was standing in front of her.

“You gave me the wrong file,” he said, frowning, holding it out.

“Oh, sorry...right.” She found the right file and handed it to him. “Here you go. Sorry about that. Won’t happen again.” He left. She didn’t remember giving him a file before, or even him stopping by, but she must have just spaced out. It had been a terrible week. She returned to the paperwork, realizing she’d filled half of the current page out wrong. Damn. She started working on it but was interrupted by the door opening again.

“Miss Lopez!” Lucifer said brightly, holding out a cup of coffee from the cafe down the street. “Your favorite.”

“Thanks, Lucifer!” She took a drink and nearly cried. Sweet and creamy and perfect. So unlike the poison that percolated out of the break room machine. She felt her will to live rise.

He glanced at the mess on her table, but before he could speak Chloe called from the bullpen. “Lucifer, we have to interview suspects.”

“My apologies,” he said, stepping back out. 

Ella sighed and returned to the paperwork. The next time she looked up, it was 6:15. Whoops. She shook her head and gathered her stuff. Everyone else had gone home, except for Chloe, who frowned down at her own paperwork. It must have been Dan’s weekend with Trixie. She didn’t even notice Ella as she passed.

Dinner was a Lean Cuisine, still a little cold in the middle, and the last stale donut from her trip to a nearby bakery the previous weekend. She yawned her way through dinner and headed to bed early again. She considered texting Lucifer, or Chloe, but instead watched videos on Wobble until her eyes hurt.

It took a long time to fall asleep.

* * *

Ella brushed her teeth the next Wednesday with her eyes closed. The weekend had been a blur of badly-timed naps and going to the store only to forget half of what she needed. She’d slept especially badly the last couple of days and had woken up sore and exhausted way too many days in a row. She grumbled and spat, grabbing a nearby glass of water. She stumbled into the kitchen and made herself a protein drink before she headed to work. Maybe actually having breakfast for the first time in two weeks would help.

No dice. The morning was even slower than usual and dragged on and on and _on._ She managed only ten minutes for lunch—and even coffee wasn’t keeping her eyelids from drooping. Somehow, though she’d been hard at work all day, she’d barely gotten anything done. She had to keep redoing analyses, refilling out paperwork. The door creaked as it opened.

“Have you got that phone cracked yet?” Dan asked, dropping yet more paperwork onto Ella’s already overfilled table.

“Um.” Ella frowned and dug through papers. She couldn’t remember. _Why_ couldn’t she remember? Dan sighed loudly, but she ignored him, digging frantically. There. At the bottom of one of the stacks she needed to send to spectroscopy. She turned to her computer and pulled up the number. Becca from Cyber had been running late, so she’d only just got it in today.

“I don’t have all day,” Dan said in exasperation.

Ella badly stifled a yawn and snapped, “I’m doing the work of four people, Dan.”

“I know, it’s just—”

“Could you give me a break for _once?”_

“Yeah,” Dan said, chagrined. “Yeah, I...I’ll ask you later.”

“I’ll have it for you as soon as I can.”

“Right.” Dan’s jaw twitched. It was clear he wanted to say something else, but instead he turned on his heel and walked out.

 _Ugh._ Ella pressed her fingertips to her pounding head, reaching blindly with the other hand for the excedrin. It was probably messing with her sleep, but she needed it to function. _You didn’t have to be so mean to Dan,_ drifted through her mind. _But I wasn’t,_ she argued. Her brain wasn’t so convinced. 

_You’re self-isolating again, Ella,_ it whispered, with the voice of her old therapist. _Who have you really talked to in weeks? Not Chloe, not Lucifer, not Dan. Just a ghost you made up in your head. Just like before._

Like after the car wreck, when she’d first seen Ray-Ray. Her imaginary friend, her trauma figment, her ghost. It had taken years—of meds and therapy and all the rest—to stop seeing her. To stop paying attention to her over real people, _real_ friends. To make the other voices go away, or at least be quiet. To stop living so much of her life in her own head that no one else was allowed in.

 _None of them care about you,_ the voice in her head whispered. _They’ll all forget you anyway._ And the words weren’t surprising, or even new, but they were getting louder again. So loud it was hard to hear anything else. She put her earbuds in and turned her music louder, but she could still hear them, whispers turning to shouts.

She busied herself, again, with work, and when she emerged it was after six. She sighed, packed up her stuff, and drove home, stopping by In-N-Out Burger on the way home. Burying her feelings in a hamburger and fries didn’t exactly _work,_ but at least she had a burger and fries. She kept her eyes on the Ouija board as she ate, unable to focus on anything else. 

Eventually, unable to stop herself, she pulled the damn thing out and set it up on the coffee table. Lights out. Candles lit. Wine seriously considered but decided against. The last thing she needed was another hangover. She set her fingertips on the planchette.

_hey collin its been a pretty bad day_

Nothing happened. She sighed and shut her eyes, trying to get into the sort of headspace Briar called _trance,_ which the therapists always called mindfulness. _Keep your mind open to the energies of the universe._ She tried again.

_are you there_

No one replied, energies or not. She dragged the planchette hard against the driftwood, pointing to various symbols she didn’t understand. When she gave up, she dumped both pieces in the box and dropped it on the floor, kicking it under the couch. So much for ghosts.

She headed for the bathroom instead and drew water for a bath. She read the first third of a Star Wars EU novel whose canonicity had been dumped on by the new movies before setting her phone on the toilet lid and washing her hair. Opening the medicine cabinet to get her face cream, she noticed some old psych meds she hadn’t finished. They might be able to tide her over for a while, but...no. She took a breath, then shook her head and shut the door. Tomorrow. She’d talk to her doctor tomorrow.

* * *

Thursday passed in a haze, and sometime after midnight Ella finally remembered to make a note in her phone.

CALL DOCTOR

* * *

“Ugh.”

Ella didn’t feel like she’d slept _at all._ She stumbled into the bathroom and washed her face, looking at the dark circles under her eyes. She tried to conceal it as well as she could, then finished getting ready. As she was pulling her jeans on, she winced. She looked down at her hip and frowned at the bruise there. Damn, she must have hit it on something.

_Thank God it’s Friday._

She did, at least, get to work on time for once. It was exhausting to even get to her lab, and she threw her bag and jacket in the corner. She stood at her table, palms pressed into her eyes. She was probably messing up her concealer. She didn’t have the energy to care. Coffee. She needed coffee.

She made her way to the break room, only to find the coffee pot empty. Damn. Ignoring the whispers that had started up again shortly after arriving at work— _they don’t even care enough to leave you some coffee_ —she set to work making a new pot. She went through the motions distractedly, trying to focus on the movements of her hands and failing. She was _so_ tired. Her brain was _so_ loud. She just wanted it to stop.

She listened to the drip of the coffee into the pot, trying not to space out again. It was so easy to lose time. But staying present meant she had to deal with her brain. She pulled out her phone and checked messages, but there were none. She pulled up Wobble and started playing the videos on the front page. A notification popped up—some kind of alert—and she dismissed it and forgot all about it. The videos were distracting. Maybe too distracting.

“You gonna...get some coffee?” a uni she didn’t know the name of asked.

“Yeah. Right. Of course.” She put her phone away and grabbed the carafe and a cup. Halfway through pouring, her brain decided to grant her a horrible image of her smacking the uni in the face with the mug. _Stop that,_ she scolded her mind, trying to push the images of his busted lip and bruising face down. It had been years since she’d had these, and they were always incredibly disturbing. Not since she’d gotten way too into poker to keep her brain occupied had they been so vivid.

The coffee, which had still apparently been pouring this whole time, overfilled and splashed against her fingers. She bit back the pain, mindful of the uni behind her. She set the carafe down and left without sugar or cream, just to get back to her lab. Once she was alone, she put the mug down and clutched at her burnt fingers.

“Owww,” she breathed. But there was nothing for it but to distract herself. And anyway, there was work to be done.

* * *

_Whoa._ How was it already noon?

Ella stretched out her back and worked a crick out of her neck, standing. She was going to have a real lunch for once this week. Her head was still pounding, but she ignored it, heading out into the bullpen.

“Hey,” she started brightly, “anyone wanna go in on…” But the bullpen was empty. The only person she could see was the desk sergeant, phone in one hand, pen in the other.

“Oh,” she said, visiting the break room for another cup of coffee instead. It was a little stale by now, but she’d washed pills down with worse.

Couldn’t her goddamn head stop hurting for one goddamn minute?

Major crimes had found their man, and she needed to package everything up to send to the prosecutors. At the same time, Yousef from Burglary needed _another_ fingerprint analysis, and Dan was still waiting on that damn phone. Couldn’t they just hire more people to do this damn job?

“You can do this, Ella.” _You can’t._ “We got this.” _We don’t._

Ugh.

She _could_ ask for help. But she managed the work before, didn’t she? And if she asked, it would prove to her bosses that she couldn’t handle it. And _then_ she’d just end up working in Ricardo’s shop and stealing cars again. Or going back home to Detroit and not having her friends anymore. _What friends?_

“Shut _up,”_ she groaned, rubbing at her eyes again. Tears were pricking at them, and she tried to bite them back, but this week had just been _too much._ Color burst over her vision, and she crouched down behind her table—away from the windows—and let the tears come.

They’d all left without her, gone to have a fun lunch while she was left behind. _Maybe they don’t care._ Maybe they _didn’t_ care. Maybe Chloe only liked her for her work, and Lucifer only liked her because he liked _everybody._ Maybe they all put up with her because it was easier to just be polite. Crazy Ella who had _ghosts_ and heard _voices_ and who tried to make people like her by hugging them all the time. No wonder they didn’t want to hang out.

When she finished her pity party, she wiped ineffectually at her eyes and returned to work. She put her earbuds in and finally remembered to actually turn music on before she dove back into the endless pile of garbage.

What else could she do?

* * *

Ella spent the weekend bingeing the extended editions of _The Lord of the Rings_ and finally finishing her _Stargate_ marathon. She ran Wobble out of weird niche videos and gave up on Tumblr for the third time this year. When Monday dawned, too bright and way too early, she shoved a poptart in her mouth and told herself this week would be better.

Sure she was exhausted, weepy, mad at herself and everyone else, maybe a little existentially sad, but dammit she did actually like this job sometimes. She _was_ good at it. The proof was clear in the work. She finished up the new week’s impending projects with a cool bit of hyperfocus, then turned to the slightly-higher-than-usual stack of backlog paperwork.

Her hand started aching, and her head still hurt, but she ignored it, drank two cups of coffee, and kept on it. She even bopped a little to her music. Endless optimism and cheer was her brand; she couldn’t let peppy!Ella down.

Hours ticked by, and the pile grew smaller and smaller. Lunch was disregarded, so was everything else. She was nearly to the end of it. Just a little more and...

“Ella!” Chloe said sharply. 

Like being torn from a wild dream, she blinked, focusing on the woman standing in front of her. She pulled out her ear buds, still shaking off the disorientation. “Yeah. Yep. Absolutely.”

Chloe sighed, and the voices came back with a vengeance. “Do you have the blood spatter analysis on the Kramer case?”

“Um.” She dug through the pile of papers on her desk. Several documents should have already been filed, and she cringed internally at the potential break in chain-of-custody. Where _was_ it? It should have been safely filed over the weekend, but instead she had to keep digging. She found the report, eventually, and shoved it at Chloe, unable to say anything else.

“Thanks.” Chloe started reading through it.

“It’s all there?” Ella asked, then shook her head. “Of course, it is. I don’t know why I’d even—“

“Hey, are you doing alright?” Chloe asked, frowning.

Ella inhaled sharply. “Yeah. Yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“You seem…off? Not to be rude…”

“Oh, well, you know, lots of work, not enough slee—”

Chloe’s phone rang. She glanced down at it. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” she said apologetically, cramming the phone between shoulder and ear. “Talk later? Yeah, Dan?”

Before Ella could formulate a response, she grabbed the file and ran out. She pulled out her phone to look at the time. 4:47. That was enough, right?

* * *

The next night, Ella stared into the depths of her nearly empty refrigerator. It was a moment so cliched she even had the requisite bottle of ketchup and carton of probably expired milk. She needed to go to the store, but she was _so tired._ She could do it tomorrow. For now, she turned instead to the concerningly bare cabinets and made herself some ramen. She was halfway through stirring the flavor packet into the broth when she dropped her spoon and slapped a hand to her face.

“Dammit.”

She’d forgotten to call her doctor for _days,_ and now it was too late. Again. She must have dismissed the notification last week without noticing. She made another, then went to find her brightest sticky notes. She snagged a pen out of her bag and wrote CALL DOCTOR on three of them. She stuck them to the refrigerator, the front door, and the bathroom mirror. 

By the time she got back to her ramen, it had gone lukewarm, but she ate it anyway without bothering to heat it up. As soon as she finished, she dumped the dirty bowl and spoon in the sink, and tromped off to bed. Hump day slump, she told herself, ignoring that it was only Tuesday. Maybe a nap would make her feel better. She got in bed, set her alarm for 8:30 and immediately passed out.

* * *

She was running, feet smacking against asphalt as she ran down an alley. Chasing, or running away, she wasn’t sure. But she had to keep running, keep running. She couldn’t stop. She burst from the alley onto an empty, warehouse-lined street. The streetlamps blazed at the edges of her vision as she ran down the center of the road. She was so close—so close to whatever it was she needed—she could almost taste it.

There, out of the corner of her eye, movement. Fear—or excitement—filled her veins, propelling her further, faster. Her breaths huffed out rhythmically, fogging in the humid, evening air. “Come on,” she whispered to herself. “Come on.”

Something ahead of her shifted, or maybe behind. Someone falling, or maybe she was falling? “No, no, _please,”_ someone—or she—pleaded. “Please don’t. I…”

Ella woke with a start, flailing in a worryingly dark room. She panted, snagging her phone off the bedside table. Three am. Whoops. She was concerningly awake, from the dream, and from her eight hour long nap. But though she wasn’t sleepy, she was still exhausted and didn’t want to get up. She flopped back to the pillows with her phone. Surely the internet had _something_ interesting.

She read half of the first chapter of three separate Star Trek TNG fanfics before getting bored and digging through the tags for a while. When she ended up reading a fic for a fandom she didn’t recognize about a kink she’d never even heard of, head tilting on her pillow, she exited out of the browser and sighed. She grabbed her earbuds off the table and stuck them in, navigating to Spotify. She hit shuffle on her liked songs, skipped past four of them, listened to three, then shut the app back off. Ugh.

She went to messages instead, composing a text to Chloe about maybe getting together this weekend for another girl’s night, before she realized it was 3:30 and deleted the text. She could talk to her tomorrow, if she remembered. Super _ugh._ She didn’t look forward to going to work in five hours.

To keep her mind off her impending doom, she opened Tumblr, scrolled until she got unreasonably mad, then opened Wobble and did the same. She wrote half an angry post, all in caps, then saved it as a draft and shut the app before she made a bad decision. Instead, she opened YouTube and browsed boredly through the ASMRtists she followed before settling on a guided meditation. _Mindfulness,_ the therapists whispered in her head. _Trance,_ Briar muttered.

She made it ten minutes in before she was kicking her feet, knocking the sheets off the bed. She pulled out her earbuds, threw them onto the bedside table, set a new alarm for morning on her phone, then buried her head grumpily in the pillows.

It was starting to be light in the room by the time she finally managed to be tired enough to sleep. She snuggled into the sheet that was left on the bed and settled in to sleep...only to immediately have to pee, badly.

“Dammit,” she whispered to herself, getting out of bed. The floor was _cold,_ and she shivered as she made her way to the bathroom. Her feet hurt. Maybe she needed new shoes. She sat on the toilet and buried her face in her hands, repeating song lyrics to herself to stave off cruel whispers, trying to cling to her exhaustion. Why did tomorrow have to be Wednesday?

* * *

Ella woke up in her bed to the alarm blaring, not remembering falling back asleep in the first place.

“Ugh,” she muttered to herself before getting out of bed and going through the motions to get ready for work. The sheets were still puddled on the floor. She brushed her teeth almost angrily, glaring at herself in the mirror. She pulled open the refrigerator and grabbed the last yogurt she had before eating it on the way back to the bedroom to get dressed. She yanked the front door open, slamming it shut behind her.

Screw this day hard.

* * *

Ella got a cup of coffee quickly before retiring to her lab, closing the door hard enough the shutters shuddered. Her head _still_ hurt, and her brain was loud with arguments between her and the increasingly loud whispers about hating her friends, nearly rear-ending someone during her commute because she wasn’t paying enough attention, and disturbingly vivid images of pushing people down the precinct stairs.

She shook her head. At least she’d nearly swept the backlog clear Monday and yesterday. Today ought to be an easy, relaxing day. Maybe she’d take an extra long lunch and dare anyone to complain after leaving her out of whatever happened last week. All she had to do this morning was file everything she’d already finished. She’d only barely started in on the process, when she happened to bend a folder weird. Stopping to straighten it out, a piece of paper fell out onto the table. She picked it up, prepared to slot it back in, and…

Oh, no.

Oh, _no._

Her handwriting, for one, was _terrible._ It wasn’t great at the best of times, but she’d learned to neaten it for work. But this was barely more than chicken scratch. In several places on the papers in this particular folder, the ink had run when she hadn’t been paying attention. Worse, as she dug through everything she’d finished, she realized that what of it wasn’t nearly indecipherable was just _wrong._

How could she have messed up this badly? And for _days?_

It was going to take all day just to fix this, let alone what her emails, internal messages, and random people showing up in her lab might require. She wanted to bury her head in her hands, have a good cry, and give up. But she was always happy Ella, who gave the best hugs— _no one likes them._ Who was the best listener when anyone else was having a bad day— _they just humor you._ Who always, _always_ saw the bright side of every situation— _this was hopeless; she’d never finish in time._

She could do this. _She couldn’t._ She could _do_ this.

* * *

Four hours later, lunch had been and gone without her, and Ella was crouched on the far side of her table again, crying. She sniffled, trying to tide the flow, but nothing would stop it. She’d managed to fix _some_ of her mistakes, but a lot of the paperwork was still a mess. She had _so_ much work to do, and every time her mind drifted, she seemed to lose a few minutes. She shuddered, wiping her face.

 _Get it together, Ella,_ she told herself. Her brain decided that was the cue to show her blood spattering Chloe’s face, Dan’s, Lucifer’s. To show her herself with a knife in her hand, blood on her fingers. She shook her head harder, feeling the pain throb behind her eyes. She reached for her excedrin, but she must’ve run out. That wasn’t a great sign, but before she could consider it harder, she blinked, and someone was opening the door.

“Miss Lopez,” Lucifer said broadly in greeting, “why have you been hiding in here all day?”

She stood up. She couldn’t conceal the evidence of her crying, but she wouldn’t hide from Lucifer. Not now. He deserved more than that, at least.

“Miss Lopez.” He frowned and put the drink and small bag in his hand aside. “Are you entirely alright?”

“I…” She hiccoughed, wavering on the spot. Lucifer’s frown deepened, and the words, “I’m fine,” escaped her mouth. An obvious lie. Wasn’t someone caring what she _wanted?_

“You are not fine,” Lucifer said sternly. “After the last few days”—what, when they abandoned her?—”the detective was somewhat concerned.”

“You... She…” Ella gasped in a breath, trying to stay calm. All she had to say was, _I need help, help me, please._ She’d trusted Lucifer with his creepy hole in the ground; she could trust him with this. He was her friend, and not just because it was convenient. _He doesn’t care about you._ But she couldn’t make herself say it. She couldn’t make herself do anything but stand there, mute, clawing at the inside of her skin, unable to move.

Lucifer hummed, clearly preparing to say something else, when the door slammed open, and Charlotte Richards walked in, all easy elegance and shark-toothed grace. “Lucifer,” she said scornfully, ignoring Ella entirely, “Don’t we have...things...to do?”

“Right,” he said, any softness in his expression buried. “Yes. Of course. This way.” He started leading her back out of the room, not looking back.

“...your little friends,” was the last thing Ella heard before he shut the door behind him.

* * *

The rest of the day passed in starts and jumps, and sooner that seemed possible it was nearly six. Ella gave up the paperwork as a bad job, for now, though thinking about it made her brain itch. She stacked things as neatly as she could and grabbed her jacket and bag before heading out to her car.

Maybe she could text Lucifer, follow up on their conversation. Surely he was done with Charlotte Richards and whatever it was she needed from him. She pulled out her phone, but before she could pull up messages, she was distracted by the unacknowledged notification. CALL DOCTOR, it read. Dammit. She forgot again. And now it was too late _again._ And hadn’t she left notes on the mirror, the fridge, the door? And she hadn’t seen _any_ of them?

Frustrated with herself, she threw the phone into the passenger seat and started the car. She drove—a little faster than she should—arguing with herself. _Useless._ She couldn’t even remember to make a simple phone call. Maybe she _wanted_ to forget. Maybe she couldn’t deal with having to play the doctor, meds, therapy game yet again.

She’d thought she was fine after she got the blackjack under control. Well, not _fine,_ but managing. She’d been off meds for years; the whispers and disturbing images hadn’t come back, and neither had Ray-Ray. But now she wasn’t sleeping, she couldn’t stop her mind from spiraling, and her head _still_ goddamn hurt.

She realized she was hyperventilating and forced her breathing to calm. She tried to focus on the world outside of the car, looking at trees and birds between the streetlights and stop signs. She pulled into a four-way intersection and watched a car pass in front of her, her brain less-than-helpfully providing a vision of her t-boning the vehicle, the broken glass and all the blood. From there, her mind took her to the car crash when she was a kid, to the first time she saw her ghost.

 _Years_ of effort, and all it took to drag her back was a car driving in front of her. Feeling panicky, she found a parking lot she could pull into. She paid fifteen bucks for the privilege of getting to stop driving for a moment. But she needed it. She shut off the car and returned her hands to the steering wheel, working on breathing exercises, trying to calm her racing thoughts. In and out. In and out. In and…

* * *

Ella frowned at the unfamiliar vista bathed in orange and shadow. Where...was she?

She glanced out the side windows, seeing trees and distant, rocky bluffs. Right. This was not what the part of L.A. by her apartment looked like, nor what the part of L.A. by the precinct looked like, nor, in fact, any part of L.A. she remembered visiting. She reached for her phone and realized it had fallen to the floor. Bending nearly in half, she managed to grab it.

Frowning at the time—it was nearly nine—she pulled up _Maps._ Thankfully, she had service here, wherever _here_ was, and quickly she realized that she’d somehow driven up the Grapevine and was now halfway to Bakersfield.

“How in the hell?”

She thought about calling someone, but how was she supposed to explain? And how _embarrassing_ would it be to try? Her mind just drifted. She was distracted, but she was _fine,_ and she knew how to get home. She checked her gas gauge; at least she still had plenty of fuel, since she had no idea where the nearest gas station was and didn’t much want to find out.

She drove home like she was taking her driving test—which she’d gotten _well_ after she started driving, now that she was thinking about it. Hands at ten and two. No music. Eyes fixed on the road. Following the flow of traffic as much as possible, and if not, the speed limit exactly. She made her way home, parked, jumped from the car like it had burned her, and half-ran inside.

It was nearly midnight. She didn’t bother with food, tv, or any kind of reminder. She went directly to her bedroom and was out before her head hit the pillow.

* * *

Ella woke without an alarm with the room _way_ too bright. She was going to be late; oh, _god,_ she was going to be late again. She dressed in a haze, ignoring the bruises on her knee and down her right calf. She barely managed to brush her teeth and put on deodorant before she was stumbling out the front door. She pulled her hair into a messy bun in the car to not have to deal with it and drove as quickly as she felt comfortable with.

She pulled up to the precinct and ran inside, expecting to be met with the disapproving stares of the desk sergeant, the lieutenant, the unis, the detectives, and, worst of all, her friends. Instead, the station was entirely empty except for the shift-work desk sergeant, a handful of unis looking annoyed, and Chloe, who looked up from her paperwork with a quizzical expression on her face.

“What are you doing, Ella?”

“I’m…” She huffed, panting. “I’m...not...that...late.”

Chloe frowned. “You know it’s Saturday, right?”

“It’s…” Where had Thursday gone? Hell, where had _Friday_ gone? She stopped her racing mind, barely, repeating the mantra she’d lived by in school: _Don’t be weird, don’t be weird, don’t be weird._ “Yeah, of course,” she said, gesturing in what she hoped was a casual manner. “I just...forgot something in the lab.” Smooth, Lopez. Smooth.

“Right…” Chloe didn’t look like she believed her, but she returned to her paperwork anyway.

Ella slipped into the lab, grabbed the least ridiculous thing she could think of—a mug and three pens—and made her way back into the bullpen. Chloe glanced back up at her. “You sure you’re okay?”

Most of the last few weeks Ella had wanted someone to notice she wasn’t doing well. She’d gotten out a damn Ouija board she had felt so lonely. Yet now, with help so close to being offered, just like yesterday— _three days ago_ —with Lucifer, she couldn’t make herself say it. All she saw when she looked at Chloe was the kids who had bullied her at school. The strange looks extended family had given her, whispering behind their hands. The uncomfortable laughter of her college roommate when she’d accidentally revealed too much. And the way Dan and even Chloe had looked at her when she’d forgotten herself.

“If there’s anything I can do…” Chloe said, trailing off.

 _You can fuck off,_ her brain grumbled. Instead she forced a smile and said, “I’m fine, really.”. She knew that smile was perfect. She’d practiced.

Chloe nodded, returning back to her paperwork. _She didn’t really care anyway,_ a voice less whispered than shouted in her mind.

For once, she agreed with it.

* * *

Ella returned home in a daze and went back to sleep, waking up long enough to have half a glass of water, a handful of saltines, and a spoonful of peanut butter directly from the jar. She slept through most of the afternoon into the evening, and woke up again as the sun went down. It was always disconcerting to wake into darkness, but she barely had the energy to be uncomfortable, only managing to make it to the kitchen for two pieces of slightly stale toast and a sniff of the very sour milk.

One of the CALL DOCTOR notes was crumpled up in the trash. But they weren’t open on weekends, and the thought left her mind as quickly as it had arrived.

She went back to bed, messed around on her phone until her eyes hurt too much to stand the screen, then fell asleep curled into an awkward ball. When she woke up the next time, she realized she’d missed church, then realized she didn’t particularly care, and went back to sleep. She got up long enough midday to pee and have a protein drink, the last part of her that gave any amount of a damn trying to at least keep her alive.

It took longer to fall back asleep this time, but everything she could imagine doing sounded aggressively boring. Instead, she stared at the ceiling, listening to the awful thoughts ricocheting around her brain, watching the images it conjured to disturb her. Blood featured in many of them. Blood and broken glass.

She got up, determined to find something to purge her brain of this crap. It was too late to call anyone, but even switching back and forth between Netflix and Hulu and Amazon, staring vacantly at thumbnails, would be better than wallowing in her own head. The last thing she remembered was opening the bedroom door and stepping into the dark living room. 

* * *

Something was dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. Slow and steady, almost languid. Not water. No, something thicker. And her fingers were wet. Why were her fingers wet? And warm, but a warm that was rapidly cooling. Drip. Drip. Drip. What _was_ that? Her feet hurt, like she'd been standing on concrete all day. Her legs were unsteady. Her shirt was sticking to her stomach, her chest— _drip drip drip_ —and she was holding something in one hand. Something heavy. And her fingers were wet.

She blinked, realizing only then that her eyes had been open all along. It was dark in here, wherever here was. Not her bedroom. Not the living room, either. She blinked again and looked down, down at her wet fingers, down at her sticky shirt, down at her shaking legs and sore feet. Down at the thing in her hand, the heavy thing, dangling from her fingertips. 

A knife.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings are in the end notes.

Drip drip drip went the blood from the tip of the knife to the floor. Drip, drip, drip from the tip of the knife to the puddle on the carpet on the floor. The puddle that washed over her aching feet. The puddle as red as the stickiness on her shirt. The puddle as red as the wetness on her fingers.

She could smell it now, cloying in her nose, thick on her tongue and down her throat. Blood, yes, but also the bitterness of bile, the sharpness of urine, the pungent stink of severed intestine. Drip drip drip, the blood and the bile and everything else. There, feet from her, though she hadn't seen— _how hadn't she seen?_ —a body. A man, face up, blood across his face, shirt a mess of torn, red-stained fabric. Eyes wide and unblinking. And there, on her other side, a woman, face down, long, blonde hair matted, shirt soaked through, blood pooling beneath her.

Ella exhaled roughly, legs shaking, feet aching, shirt sticky, and fingers wet. She blinked, blinked again, but nothing changed. It didn't go away. She didn’t wake up. She licked her dry lips, tasting rust and iron and salt. She trembled harder but didn't fall. Barely moved. There was nothing in her mind but static even as her brain catalogued the injuries of the people who were...of the cor...of the _victims._ The knife wounds, consistent with the shape of the blade in her hand. Blood spray, arterial, across her chest, up over her face, her lips, her eyes.

Her eyes stung, and she blinked again, trying a step, feet numb, legs numb, fingertips numb. The sole of her shoe made a sucking sound as she lifted it, a splattering noise as she put it back down. She turned, slowly— _suck, splatter, suck, splatter_ —making herself look past the man and the woman.

Candles lined a low table on one side, cold and unlit. An old upright piano sat across from it, keys dusty. At the far end were rows of seating, a large door. On the near end another table, covered in a red sheet. Above and all around, stained glass let in a small amount of light, red and orange and blue. And down the central aisle, between the pews, leading to the church door, another body. Face down, hair short and white and shaggy. Feet behind him, a solid, knurled cane.

If she could have, she would have screamed. Would have howled and gnashed her teeth, beat her breast and fallen to her knees, t-shirt and blood her sackcloth and ashes. She might've prayed, tears falling down her cheeks, staring up at the vaulted ceiling in supplication, in penitence for a sin that never could be forgiven. She might have plunged the point of the blade into her chest, wrenching it aside until she was just another empty body, lying on the floor of the church.

But she couldn't, couldn't do anything but process the sequence of events, how she'd taken the woman first, not cleanly but quickly, a slash across the throat so deep she might've choked before she bled out. The man had tried to fight back—she could feel bruises on her arms now, scratches where he’d tried to stop her. But it hadn't been enough. There were so many wounds, chest and abdomen, mangling what remained of his shirt and jacket, that she couldn't identify the cause of death. It could be any of them, really. All of them. And the elderly man, too slow to get away when she'd torn the cane from his hand. He'd fallen to his knees, had dragged himself some distance—the blood smear on the floor—but it still hadn't been enough.

None of it had been enough.

She looked down at her hands, fingers still wet—drip drip drip—everything so, so numb. The static in her mind was twisting, warping, a radio going in and out of tune. The colors were bright, vivid, then dull, empty.

 _You were defending yourself,_ a voice whispered. But then why was the old man dead with a knife wound in his back? _They attacked you._ But then why was she barely hurt? And a darker voice, one that had become familiar again so recently. _You wanted this._ No. _No,_ she... _You lured them in here_ —but it wasn't true, wasn't true— _and took what you wanted._

"No!" she shouted at the empty room. The word echoed off the stained glass, off the pews, off the vaulted ceiling. She fell to her knees, feeling blood seep into her jeans, feeling the shock of pain travel up her legs and shudder in her hips. Her abuela told her once that God would come down to rest in the rafters during service, to watch the prayers and the homilies. To smile down upon his flock. But there was no one here to hear her pray. No one to raise her up and reassure her. But maybe…

She pawed at her pocket with numb fingers, drying blood cracking on her knuckles. Her phone was still there; she could feel it against her leg. She pried it from the denim, blood smearing across the screen. She could hit the emergency button. It was right there. All she had to do was— 

_No,_ a voice in her head shouted, a voice she couldn't ignore. She’d never be able to explain this to the cops, to her _colleagues._ She couldn’t even explain it to herself. She unlocked the phone and scrolled frantically through the contacts. She couldn't call Chloe, couldn't call Dan. She was guilty; she knew she was guilty, and they would know too. But there had to be a way. She needed someone who would _understand._ She stopped at another name, thumb hovering over it. There were no take-backs after this. She hit the button. The phone rang. Once, twice. Echoing. _Echoing._ On the third ring it picked up.

"Why, Miss Lopez, I didn't think you stayed up this late on school ni—"

"Lucifer..." Her voice was too loud, too horrified, too _everything,_ but breaking the silence broke whatever composure she’d been managing to cling to, and tears slipped wetly down her cheeks.

"What happened?" he asked sharply.

"I...I don't know."

"Where are you?"

"A church. I don't know, I...I did something. Something terrible. I..."

"Ella, what in the world is—?"

"H-help me," she half whispered, half-sobbed. _"Please."_

There was a terrifying pause where the shuddering emptiness in her brain threatened to overtake her, where the whispers began to drown out rational thought entirely. But then Lucifer spoke again, and she could finally, finally breathe. "Don't move," he said. "I'll come get you."

The call cut off, and Ella was alone.

* * *

It could have been minutes, or hours, and still Ella knelt in the middle of the church, surrounded by the dead. She was terrified of losing time again, but her mind was so lost to fear and horror, adrenaline making her limbs shake, that she felt every second. Her phone was still clutched in her hand, her knees ached, and she waited, frozen.

The door creaked open, but she didn’t have the energy to be any more afraid than she already was. Someone shut the door, paused, then began walking up the aisle. Ella couldn’t turn her head to look, couldn’t move at all. Her breaths were coming faster and faster. Her vision clouded. Pain shot through her chest, out to her fingers, dry now, still clutched around the handle of the knife.

“Miss Lopez?”

 _Lucifer._ Lucifer was here. Lucifer found her. Lucifer found her...surrounded by dead bodies and covered in blood. He came into her line of sight. He was looking at the other two bodies, the younger man and the woman. He frowned, and it carved into Ella’s heart. He crouched, staring at her, but she couldn’t meet his gaze, couldn’t move at all.

 _He’s not going to help you,_ the voices shouted. She watched his lips move but didn’t know what he was saying. He reached into his pocket. _He’s going to get his phone, call the cops. He_ should _call the cops. You’re a murderer._ He pulled out a white handkerchief and reached up, carefully wiping blood from her face.

“Miss Lopez… Ella,” he said again, and she heard him this time. “Are you hurt?”

She opened her mouth. Nausea rose, and she shut it again, swallowing reflexively. She tasted blood and bile and swallowed again. Again. She could feel her pulse in her knees, in her fingertips, in her cheeks. Fingers caught at the knife in her hand, and Lucifer pulled it away.

“What did they do to you?” he asked in a low voice, tinged with...menace? Anger?.

Her confusion, of all things, pulled her out of her trance. She blinked, frowned, managed to clear her throat. “W-what do you mean?”

His head tilted. “What did they do to force you to defend yourself in such a way?”

“Nothing! I mean… I don’t think... “ She inhaled shakily. “I don’t know what happened!” Her breaths started to come faster and faster, and she burst into further tears. Her head pounded, her eyes burned, and everything started to become distant and strange. She was losing time again, maybe, or maybe she just couldn’t move. But she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t stop Lucifer from standing, couldn’t ask him to not leave her. She couldn’t stop him when instead he leaned down and pulled her into his arms. Blood smeared over his suit jacket, but he didn’t seem to notice.

The voices turned to shouts again—layers on layers, drowned out into static. She felt herself being pressed to Lucifer’s chest, clinging to the only thing she could focus on. This, someone who really cared, who _understood,_ was what she’d wanted. But not like this. Not stinking of blood, with the church door creaking behind him. Not with his hand on the back of her neck to keep her head from lolling.

Sensations crashed over her in waves, beating against her buzzing brain. Arms around her in some horrible mockery of a hug—too soaked with tears and blood to hold any kind of real reassurance. The evening air was cool on her wet face and clothes. The press of a car seat against her back was solid and steady and _there._ The _shushing_ of the soft top being pulled over the convertible dragged her back to the present.

Lucifer pressed his handkerchief into her hands, and she stared down at it, following the line of bloodstain with her thumb.

“Do you want me to call the detective?” he asked, crouching in the space left by the open door. “Or should I...take care of it?”

“Don’t call Chloe,” she told the handkerchief, running it through her fingers. “Please, just…” She fell back into silence, staring at her hands.

“Okay,” he said, pulling out his phone and standing. “Okay.”

Fear shot through her— _he’s going to call the cops; he_ should _call the cops_ —but she didn’t have the energy to do anything more than clutch at the handkerchief and shake.

The call was picked up almost immediately, and he pulled the phone to his ear. “Luca, sono Lucifer Morningstar.” Not the cops, then. The man, Luca, said something, and Lucifer added, “Sì, quello. Conosci forse _altri_ Lucifer?”

Lucifer knew Italian, it seemed. Who’d have thought. The man at the other end said something, and he leaned against the side of the car way too casually for the blood on his shirt, for the dead people in the church.

“Bene allora. Voglio riscuotere il mio favore. Ho...un piccolo problema che richiede le tue abilità professionali.” A pause. “Mmhmm. Sì. Se lo farai, saremo pari.”

 _Favore…_ Was she just a favor, then? Or another sucker making a deal? And a _piccolo problema?_ A _little_ problem? Is that what he called three people dead and bloody in the nave of a church? _The last two times I've darkened the doorstep of a church...insert blood-soaked carnage here_. Lucifer gave the man the address, but she missed it in pulling at a loose thread on the corner of the handkerchief.

“Eccellente,” Lucifer said. “Mi aspetto discrezione in questa faccenda, ovviamente." The man replied, and Lucifer hung up, carefully shut the door, and rounded the car. “Lovely,” he said as he settled in the driver’s seat. He glanced her way. “Everything’s going to be okay, Miss Lopez. I’m going to take you back to the penthouse, if that’s alright?”

She nodded jerkily, clinging to the handkerchief and the present moment, but the voices were getting clearer again.

She drifted in and out of awareness as he smoothly navigated out of the neighborhood and onto the highway. She stared at the pocket square, trying to count the stitches in a desperate attempt to stay present in her own head. _You’re taking advantage of his kindness. He’s going to be so mad when he finds out there was no reason you killed those people. And you did. You killed them. No one made you do it._

_Shut up._

_You’re a murderer. You’re no better than the people you help put away._

“Shut _up,”_ she whispered.

 _You dragged him into this. Now, whatever happens, he’s connected. He’ll be in just as much trouble. You’re dragging him down, like you dragged down your friends in Detroit, Vegas, everywhere you go. You drag people along with you on your path to Hell. Can’t just go it alone, can you, Ella? Too scared of being all by yourself with no one left for company but the voices in your head. Too scared that in the end, nobody ever loved you, will_ ever _love you. And why should they, when everything you touch turns to ash?_

She made a strangled noise in the back of her throat that could have been a sob or a laugh or anything at this point, she was so deep in her own head. She vaguely registered Lucifer glancing at her but couldn’t bring herself to look anywhere but at the red-stained fabric she held like it was the only thing that was real.

_And what about your abuela? Your hermanos? What are they going to think of you when they find out? The baby of the family, so much worse than all of them combined. You’re going to kill your abuela from a broken heart. It’s a good thing your parents are dead already or they’d die of shame._

On and on it went, her brain going in circles. Down and down— _none of them ever cared._ She picked at the slowly fraying handkerchief, blood spreading through the threads. _You’re just—_

“I’m going to help you into the elevator now,” Lucifer said. They were in Lux’s parking garage, her door was open, and he had rolled the roof back.

He got her on her feet and started leading her to the elevator. She let herself be pulled into the bright space, footsteps knocking against the floor in rhythm with the yelling in her mind. The same words as before, shouted over and over. _You’re a murderer. You dragged him into this. No one ever cared about you, and if they did, it only ever hurt them._ The elevator dinged, and Lucifer led her back out. He sat her down on his piano bench, and she was alone again, drifting.

“...drink this, love, come on.” A glass was pressed close to her face, and she took a sip numbly. She didn’t know Lucifer even _had_ water. She drank slowly, washing away the blood and bitterness. Her breaths came steadier; her brain quieted just a little.

As the panic slipped away, so did the numbness. Her feet hurt, her knees were throbbing painfully, and her head ached again. Her clothes were stiff with blood, and every movement cracked and pulled and stung. Lucifer stood beside her, motionless and silent. It was weird for him to be so still, but she appreciated that he wasn’t freaking out, even if he really should be.

When she finally managed to pull herself out of her own head long enough to look up at him, he nodded and gestured toward the stairs that led up to his bedroom. “Shower’s on the right, if you wanted?”

 _Don’t think. Just do it._ She nodded and made herself stand, stumbling against the piano before righting herself. Lucifer shadowed her awkwardly as she slowly made it up the stairs and down the hallway. Walking was weird. Hell, everything was weird. She was going to take a shower in Lucifer’s shower. Lucifer had mob connections who would clean up crime scenes. She had to somehow go to work tomorrow. She had k—

No, she couldn’t think about any of that. She couldn’t think about anything but what was directly in front of her. She opened the bathroom door with shaking hands, closing it behind her. It was the only door in the penthouse. That was weird, wasn’t it? She focused on how weird that was while she kicked her shoes and socks off. While she peeled her sticky jeans off her legs. While she pulled off her crusty shirt. While she left her underclothes in a pile on the floor, too tired and achy and panicky to be embarrassed about any of it.

The water was immediately hot when she knocked the faucet on. The shower was huge and luxurious, and she wished this were a better situation so she could really appreciate it. As it was, she barely managed to keep herself from barfing up stomach acid as red-tinged water started circling the drain and the smell got worse again.

She washed herself as quickly as possible, dragging shampoo through her hair, trying to knock most of the gunk out of it. Her knees were bruised, mottled purple and yellow, and she winced as she ran a loofah over them. She got more soap and scrubbed at every bare inch of skin until the water finally ran clear, then a little longer until everything hurt just a little.

She stumbled out of the shower and grabbed an unreasonably soft towel that still felt like sandpaper against all her bruises and cuts. But she was glad of the pain; it helped keep her in the moment. When she was fairly dry, she found a line of robes hanging off one wall and took one. Lucifer wouldn’t mind, right? She’d already taken way more from him than this. She made herself not look at the pile of filthy clothes on the floor, or her reflection in the foggy mirror, and instead went out into the adjoining closet. 

On the big central table sat a set of silk pajamas. He probably had them for guests since they would have been way too small for him. But they were clean, and she took off the robe and pulled them on instead. There were mirrors in here too, and she tried to avoid them. But searching for somewhere to put the discarded robe brought her face to face with one, and she couldn’t look away. 

Her clothes weren’t stained anymore. Her face was clean, if pale and drawn. But everything else was _wrong._ Her eyes were dull, the circles under them dark enough to look bruised. A strand of stringy hair clung to her cheek. Her hands weren’t bloody, but her arms were bruised, scratched, marked by what she had done.

She looked down at the pink of recently healed cuts and the mottled yellow of bruising before shaking her head and marching back down the hall, past the bed, and down the stairs into the living area before she could fall apart again. Lucifer was sitting at the bar, staring into a glass of whiskey. As she walked across the marble, he looked up at her and set his drink down. He pulled out his phone, and panic again seized her—that he was done with her, that he was going to call the cops after all.

“Should I call Doctor Linda?” he asked, frowning. “I… She might be able to—”

“No!” Ella shouted, too loud, too desperate. She panted, trying to calm down, but she couldn’t. “Please don’t,” she eventually managed, voice small.

“Okay,” he said softly, slipping the phone back into his pocket before he held his hands up. “Whatever you desire.”

She made her way to the couches and collapsed onto one, unable to stand any longer. Lucifer came over a minute later, two glasses in hand. “Here,” he said, offering her one. It was probably a bad idea to drink, but she took it anyway, taking a sip of the scotch. It burned down her throat, and she took a deep breath, feeling a little steadier.

He took a seat on the sofa across from her, and they sat in silence for a moment. But his patience was clearly wearing thin, and he fidgeted with his ring and adjusted his cufflinks. He took a drink, put his glass down on the coffee table, opened his mouth, shut his mouth. His fidgeting got worse until eventually he took a deep breath and asked, “Miss Lopez, what _happened?”_

“I…” Blood, and broken glass. And nothing. And waking up, not knowing how she got there. And nothing again. All of it was crashing over her in a wave again—all her questionable distance was gone. She clutched her drink hard in one hand, the other curled into a fist, and tried to keep from hyperventilating. Lucifer said something in the background, but she couldn’t make it out. In and out. In and out. In and— 

“I killed people,” she said finally. It was the only thing that made any sense.

Lucifer frowned, and it cut through her, but he seemed more confused than upset. “But, why? If they weren’t hurting you…”

“I don’t...know.” She set her glass on the table and slumped back into the couch. “I can’t remember.”

“Right. Yes.” He shook his head. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

She blinked, then blinked again. She strained her mind, trying to recall any detail. She had gotten out of bed, trying to distract herself from the nightmares. She had stepped out into the living room, then...stained glass, empty pews, and the nave, soaked with blood. “I was at home, this afternoon. I slept most of the day.” She sniffed. “It _is_ Sunday night, right?”

He nodded.

“And before that…I went into work yesterday. I thought it was Friday.” Her head was pounding, but she pushed past it. “And Wednesday, or...Thursday, I-I accidentally drove up the Grapevine.” She slumped into the cushions. “I don’t remember a lot of Friday.”

“Well, who hasn’t lost a day every now and then.”

“But it wasn’t just Friday.” She frowned. “Last week”—or was it the week before?—”I…”

“You were very busy, apparently,” Lucifer said when she trailed off.

“What do you mean?”

He frowned. “You said you didn’t have time to come to Officer Harris’s birthday lunch. Said, in fact, that you didn’t even want me to bring you anything back.”

“I _did?”_

“I meant to ask on Wednesday.” He grimaced, ducking his head. “But Mrs. Richards was...being difficult.”

She took another drink, feeling a little more steady. She watched the liquor slosh around the crystal. She wondered when the last time she ate was. The protein shake hours ago?

“Is this normal for you, Miss Lopez?” Lucifer asked after a minute. “Losing time and such?”

“Not for a long time,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t press. But maybe _she_ should. Maybe she hadn’t fixed anything after all.

“When did this start?” he asked. Tires screeched in her mind— _blood and broken glass_ —and he added, “This time, I mean.”

She stifled a yawn, suddenly exhausted, and let her head fall against the back of the couch. After so much adrenaline, she was having a hard time holding herself up. “Two weekends ago?” Or had it been three. She frowned at the ceiling, then averted her gaze away from her own reflection. “Thought I just got too drunk, but…” She’d lost so much time. Too much. She yawned again. “All last week, I kept spacing out at work, messing up reports.”

She’d lost _so_ much time. Who knew what had happened during it? She could have gone _anywhere,_ done any—

Lucifer interrupted her again racing thoughts. “Filling out paperwork wrong is not the same thing as _homicide_."

“I know but…” Her protestation was cut off by another yawn.

“Sleep, Miss Lopez. You’ll be able to make more sense of this after some rest. You can have the bed. Let me get it ready for you.” He stood up and walked towards the bedroom.

Her eyelids drooped. She was asleep before he reached the first stair.

* * *

“Miss Lopez!”

Ella was dragged suddenly back to reality. She was no longer sleeping on the couch. Instead, she was standing, the golden bar lights bright against her eyes. She blinked, trying to get her bearings, trying not to think about the last time this happened. She steadied her breathing. It was like she had clipped through a wall and fell out of the world. One of her hands was clutching the bar tightly enough to hurt; the other was in front of her, fingers wrapped around something solid, cold, and top-heavy. _Just look,_ she told herself. She looked.

The hilt of a knife sat, dull and dense in her hand like a dead thing. She blinked again, and her gaze slowly traveled up the blade to the point, which was pressed, hard, against...against…

“Oh, my God!” She stumbled backward. The knife clattered to the floor, and the sound echoed in her ears over and over. Adrenaline flooded her veins, but she couldn’t run or attack or do anything but stand there, frozen, eyes fixed on the knife on the floor. Slowly, she managed to look up—shoes, pants, the edge of a jacket. Higher. Button down shirt with a tear over the heart. And beneath the tear...nothing. She looked back down at the knife.

The tip of the blade was bent over.

“How…?”

“I’m alright, Ella,” Lucifer said softly. She looked up at him, at the rip in his very unstained shirt, at the complete lack of horrible, bloody stab wound.

“I tried to stab you.” Her eyes darted to the floor again, then back to his chest. “I _did_ stab you.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay?”

He glanced down at the knife. “Yes.”

“I don’t understand. How are you…? _How?”_

“I don’t lie.” He ducked his head, jammed his hands into his pockets, pulled his shoulders forward like he was trying to make himself look smaller. “Bloody awful timing, I know.”

Ella stared blankly at him for a minute, for two, mouth gaping open. But there was only so much she could panic about, and she was out of freak outs. “So...not a method actor, then?”

He made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Not as such, no.”

“That’s…” But she couldn’t do anything but laugh, bending double, hands tight on her knees. “Oh, my God, I tried to stab the Devil.” She sniffed, frowned, and everything came back at once. “Oh, my God, I tried to stab the _Devil.”_

“Miss Lopez...”

“And I _did_ stab those people. I killed them. I tried to kill _you._ I...” 

Lucifer said something, but Ella could only hear the whispers in her brain, screaming again, drowning out everything else. _You killed them. You_ wanted _to kill them. You are everything you ever feared you were._

“No, no…” She grabbed at her face, rocking back and forth on her heels. _Murderer,_ her mind whispered. _You killed them, and you tried to kill him._ “I...I killed them, and I tried to kill you.” She couldn’t stop saying it, thinking it. _Killed them. Killed them. Killed them!_ Her eyes caught on the elevator doors, and she darted to the side. She had to get out of here. But Lucifer was there, blocking her way.

“I can’t let you leave. I’m sorry, but—“

“I have to go!” she shouted, trying to push past. “Everyone’s in danger. I _killed_ them. I have to... I can’t...” She put her hand on his chest, to shove him away, to keep from falling, but he wouldn’t move. She pushed as hard as she could, but it was like trying to push a boulder.

He looked down at her hand and frowned. “Miss Lopez...you’re right handed.”

The weirdness of the question made her pause and look at her right hand, still splayed out on his chest. “What does that have to do with...?”

“Why did you wield the knife with your left hand when you tried to stab me?” It had fallen, clattering out of her hand. He shook his head. “Back at the church, why did I find you with a blade clutched in your left?” _Drip drip drip from the tip of the knife in her left hand to the floor._

“I don’t...I don’t know.”

“There’s something going on,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”

She sputtered. “What _isn’t_ wrong? What are you…?” But he was walking away from her, making his way to the side of the room covered in bookshelves. She stumbled backward to sit on a barstool, no longer able to stand. He pulled out a ridiculously old book and frowned down at it, only to put it back and move on to another. 

“Time loss, odd behavior, uncharacteristic aggression... What else has been happening?”

“I...” _Don’t tell him. He’ll laugh at you. He’ll be mad at you. He’ll think you’re dangerous._ But he _knew_ she was dangerous, and he hadn’t run away. He’d even stopped _her_ from running away. She’d asked for help; she could do this. “I haven’t been sleeping much, or eating, really. I kept making notes to call the doctor and losing them. I-I lost paperwork and keep crying and snapped at _Dan_ —”

“Who hasn’t?”

She tried to stop, but it was all pouring out of her now, pushing past her teeth and lips. “I keep waking up with bruises, and my brain keeps telling me _terrible_ things, and my head hurts _so much,_ and I just want it all to _stop.”_ She took a deep breath and felt it shudder out of her. Her face was cold, her hands were shaking, and everything seemed too far away, or too close, or...

“Oh, Miss Lopez.” Arms wrapped around her—a real hug, this time. He patted her awkwardly on the back but didn’t pull away. She tucked her head against his shirt and let herself cry. She didn’t have much choice.

After a few minutes, he took a step back and led her back to the couches. He settled her on one and left to fetch a glass of water. After he watched her drink, watched her put the glass down on the coffee table, he sighed. “How did all this start? What was the first time you lost?”

She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Three Sundays ago,” she managed eventually, “I was bored. And I was messing with this Ouija board a friend gave me, but when I woke up...it was put away. I thought I just got too drunk, but…”

“It’s just a toy sold by Hasbro, Miss Lopez.” He frowned. “They don’t work. Or at least, they shouldn’t.”

“No, I know that, I just—” She chewed on her lip. “Since I talked to Collin everything’s been weird.”

“Collin?”

 _Don’t talk to_ him. _He doesn’t care about you._ She ignored her brain and said, “I...thought I was talking to a ghost.”

“A ghost?”

“Collin St. Martin,” she said confidently, then frowned. “How did I know that?”

Lucifer pulled out his phone. “What did you and Collin talk about?”

“I…” _He’ll laugh at you._ She shook her head. “I just was bored, I guess. And maybe a little lonely. And, well, when I was a kid I had an imaginary friend who was a ghost, so it didn’t seem that weird at the time, and—”

“Collin St. Martin?” Lucifer asked, frown deepening.

“Yeah…?”

Lucifer turned his phone around and showed her the screen. 

_St. Martin dies of heart attack_

_—Collin St. Martin of Goliad, Texas, who murdered eleven people in October, 1992 in Corpus Christi, has died of a myocardial infarction just days before his scheduled execution by the state of Texas..._

“Whoa,” Ella said.

“That’s dated from a month ago.”

“Um.” She blinked, then blinked again, feeling weirdly numb. “So what does that mean?” _It doesn’t mean anything,_ the voice in her mind shouted. She shook her head. She’d only known the supernatural existed for ten minutes. This was all way above her pay grade. But Lucifer was the Devil.

He glanced back at his phone. “It means I have a call to make.”

“Wait, what does _that_ mean?”

He paused halfway through standing and sat back down. “It _shouldn’t_ be possible, but if Azrael was slacking on the job…”

“Wait, like—”

“That board wasn’t from Hasbro, was it, Miss Lopez?”

“Are…” She took a deep breath. Way, _way_ above her pay grade. “Are you saying I’ve been possessed...by a dead guy...who killed people...and he used my body...to kill _more_ people?”

He hummed. “Possibly. But don’t worry. I know a guy.”

“You know a guy...for possessions.” He shrugged, and she slumped back into the couch again. “Of course, you do. You’re the Devil.” She yawned again. No, no, she didn’t want to sleep. Not now. Not after everything. Her brain was still loud, chanting— _it’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie_ —but she was _so_ tired.

“Just rest, Mi— Ella,” Lucifer said, standing and pulling his phone to his ear. It had started to ring again. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Coming from the Devil, that shouldn’t be reassuring, but she realized, as she slumped to the side, that she felt safer with Lucifer than she had in weeks. She fell sideways onto the other cushion and was out like a light.

* * *

“Hurry up, Sam. I don't know how much longer I can hold him!”

“Regna terrae, cantate Deo, psallite Domino—”

“Ugh, what utter rubbish.”

Ella blinked sleep out of her eyes and pulled herself up to sit. Food sat on the coffee table in steaming takeout boxes, and on the tv _Supernatural_ was playing while Lucifer provided colorful commentary.

“‘Omnis satanica potestas’. As if _I_ have anything to do with it. As if demonic possession even works like— Ah, Miss Lopez. Welcome back to the world.”

"Are you watching _Supernatural?"_

He snagged the remote and paused the screen on a shot of a man with black eyes. "Yes. Well. Call it research." He glanced back at the screen and rolled his eyes. "Though Latin is hardly the holy tongue. Or an unholy one, for that matter. Why on _earth_ would a demon be susceptible to the language of bawds and drunken soldiers? Most of them don't even speak it!"

“Um.” 

“Anyway, my contact should be arriving in a few hours. I made it _quite_ clear to him that this was to be of the highest priority.” The prospect seemed to have put him back in high spirits.

Ella took a deep breath, not feeling nearly as cheerful. She glanced out past the balcony at the pale pink of early dawn. It was Sunday, right? No, it _had_ been Sunday. Now it was...

“Oh, no, I’m going to be late for work!” She looked down at the clothes she was wearing. “And I can’t go like _this._ Where are my clothes? I need—”

“Miss Lopez.”

“And my phone. I...” She made to get up. “I left it—”

 _“Ella.”_ She blinked and looked at him. “I handled it.”

“You…?”

He sighed. “I took the liberty of calling you out of work today. And myself. And your phone is charging over on the bar.”

“...oh.” All the adrenaline left her _again,_ and she sagged into the couch. Lucifer was giving her a look like he was trying to figure out something, and she realized, _Duh, he isn’t human._ It was still weird, but she already believed in God and Devil, Heaven and Hell. She just had to adjust her understanding of that world to include her best friend.

Her stomach growled.

“I didn’t know what you might want,” Satan, the adversary, king of Hell and lord of the damned said, futzing with the remote, “so I got a little of everything.”

* * *

“Oh, my _God,_ that was amazing.” Ella shoved the styrofoam aside and grabbed another takeout container. She dove into the lo mein, chopsticks clacking in her haste, and groaned.

Lucifer snickered beside her, eyes still fixed on the tv.

“What? It’s _so good.”_

He laughed harder. “I think you might just be hungry.”

She flicked a noodle at him; he stuck his tongue out at her.

The current episode ended, and another started. Outside, the sky had gone from pink shot through with blue to blue shot through with pink. Hard rock blazed from the speakers, and Lucifer casually flicked past the intro. She watched him more than the show, his familiar amusement and joy, the occasional grousing. Her best friend, the Devil—it sounded like a weird indie webcomic.

She got up and checked her phone—no messages—feeling almost normal, considering. Sure she was still teetering on the edge of panic, sure God was no longer a matter of faith but of fact, and she had no idea what to do with that. Sure, she still spaced out every once in a while and could still feel blood on her hands. But she felt so much better after food and sleep and some kind of plan, even if the idea of _possession_ still scared her half to death.

Lucifer was just easy to be around—not pushing, not freaking out, just...being there. Sharing his shows, hanging out, bringing her out of the occasional trance with a hand on her shoulder and a glance in her direction. Some part of her knew that he must be worried about her hurting someone else—which, fair, so was she—but _hell,_ she could use a break, even a fake one. She returned her attention to the show, and to Lucifer’s reactions to it. At one particularly painful moment of dialog, he groaned and rolled his eyes.

“Do you actually _like_ this show?” she asked, giggling a little at his expression.

“Until they introduce their own personal Devil,” he grumbled, exiting back to the dashboard. “What an absolute tosser. What does he want, to ‘destroy the world’?” He made air-quotes and rolled his eyes again. “How unutterably _dull.”_

Ella put the empty takeout box on the coffee table and frowned at it, at the penthouse around them. “Hey, why _are_ you here?”

He shrugged a shoulder, flicking through his watchlist. “Got bored. The sun is always nice. Music is lovely. Decent booze and food that doesn’t taste like sulfur and rot. No more bloody ash over everything.”

“That sounds horrible.” 

“It is.” They sat in silence for another minute until he tossed the remote asde and turned toward her. "Miss Lopez, pardon me if this is a delicate question, but I've been meaning to ask... Why didn’t you ask for help sooner when you realized you were losing time?"

Ice crawled up her spine, her stomach swooped, and she tightened her hands into reflexive fists. “I…” _He’ll laugh at you,_ one voice said out of the darkness in the corner of her mind. _He’ll be mad at you,_ another hissed. _He’ll hate you,_ they chorused. _You wanted this to happen,_ the worst whispered, crawling in through her ears. _You should just go jump off his balcony if you really care. He’ll be better off without you. They’ll all be better off without you._

The worst thing, she reflected numbly as the rest of her brain screamed and shot light and blood and broken glass across her vision while her mind shook with the screeching of metal and the pleas of the dying, was that she didn’t know which were her own thoughts and which had been brought by Collin, the disembodied spirit apparently living in her head. It was so cruel how she could be almost fine one moment and falling apart the next. Outwardly, she trembled, and tears slipped down her cheeks. Inwardly, she argued with herself, and with her new very-much-not friend.

But Lucifer was there, not smothering but not leaving, repeating a soft, comforting mantra that slowly pulled her out of her own head. “You’re safe. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. We’re going to figure this out. You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

Her cheeks burned as she came back to herself. “Sorry,” she said, ducking her head.

“Happens to the best of us,” Lucifer said bracingly. She wondered at the knowing sadness on his face, but, _One thing at a time,_ she reminded herself.

“I was scared,” she said, before the voices could stop her. “My brain told me no one would listen, no one would care, and...I believed it.”

She expected an, _Oh, Miss Lopez,_ or maybe another awkward hug. Or maybe just for Lucifer to get really uncomfortable and step out onto his balcony to smoke and brood. Instead, he sighed, still way more quiet than she was used to, and said, “It’s easy to believe what our minds say about us.”

She blinked. “Yeah, it’s… I don’t know. Maybe if this hadn’t ever happened before, I could believe it’s just some ghost being mean. But it has.”

He tilted his head in interest but didn’t push.

The topic was uncomfortable, maybe, but it was keeping her in the moment, and keeping the voices quiet enough to be ignored. So she continued. “When I was a kid, I got in a bad car wreck. And my mom...died, and that’s when the voices came. When I saw and heard things that weren’t real and thought no one would care.”

Mostly people would say, _I’m sorry,_ or, _That must have been horrible._ And Ella would say, _It’s okay,_ and hope they didn’t think she was crazy. Lucifer said nothing at all, but by the seriousness of his expression, she knew he was listening carefully.

“So I stole cars, I don’t know, maybe to try to take some power back over what happened. At least, that’s what the therapist said, later. I stole cars, and I got in trouble, and I kept seeing and hearing things, but…” She stared at her hands twisting anxiously in her lap. “It wasn’t the kind of thing I could tell my dad or my brothers. So I acted out, I guess, until finally a school counselor sat me down and told me that if I didn’t shape up, I’d end up in prison not in college.”

The sun slowly rose. Lucifer adjusted his cufflinks. The tv went dark from inactivity.

“Therapy, meds, and the ghosts went away. The voices got quiet enough to ignore. I was still distracted and forgot things sometimes and daydreamed too much. I was still weird and quirky and _Ella,_ but I could deal. In college, things got bad again for a while. I snuck off to Vegas and counted cards and got kicked out of half the casinos on the strip—”

Lucifer chuckled.

“—but...I figured it out. I dealt with it.” She frayed the undoubtedly expensive cuff of her pajama pants, dragging her thumb across the fabric over and over. “When I started losing time again, when I started forgetting and losing too much, when the voices got too loud, I _tried_ to call my doctor. To deal. But...I couldn’t.”

 _You never will,_ an especially nasty voice spat. She sniffed. “And maybe I…”

“Miss Lopez,” Lucifer said sharply, “you’ve somehow been possessed by a murderous human that took over your body and tried to take over your mind to carry out his barbarism. You found yourself in a terrible situation and managed to free yourself from it.”

“Only because you came and—”

“Only because _you_ called me and let me help you.” He shook his head. “You know that none of this was your fault, don’t you?”

“I-I could have told someone earlier.” Her words and the voices were the same now. “Those people would still be alive if I had just—”

“Bollocks,” Lucifer proclaimed, standing and pacing agitatedly. “Escaping that bastard’s sway at all was a miracle. _You_ did not kill those people. _This is not your fault.”_ He collapsed onto the couch again, running his hand through his hair. 

“But...”

“Hell _runs_ on guilt, Miss Lopez. It is its power and its horror. And I know—” He inhaled roughly and continued in a quieter voice, “You should harbor no guilt over this. A terrible thing has happened to you. You didn’t _cause_ it.”

She was crying again, but she couldn’t stop. “But the voices aren’t new. They were there before. They’re _always_ there, just...usually quiet enough to ignore. And they all say the same things. No one likes you. No one cares about you. You should hurt them. You should _kill_ them.”

He tilted his head, watching her. “Do you _act_ on those things, then?”

“No, of _course_ not!” she half-shouted.

“Those things you could see yourself doing, did you do them?” he asked, almost cruelly, eyes bright and shining. “Do you harm people because something in your brain tells you to?”

“No!”

“No?”

“I wouldn’t! Not _ever!”_ She found herself on her feet, yelling down at him.

He sniffed, looked up at her, and asked, “Then why do you hold yourself accountable for thoughts you can’t control?”

She let out a breath slowly, sitting back down. “But I’m the one thinking them.”

“But you’re not—” He shook his head, looking down at his lap. “Why blame yourself for the lies your mind tells you?”

She rubbed at her forehead; it was pounding again.

“You are a good person, Miss Lopez,” he said with a sigh. “The cruelties of your brain don’t besmirch your soul.” They sat for a moment, and he pulled out his phone, glancing at the time. “My contact ought to be arriving any—” The elevator dinged. “Speaking of.”

The elevator doors opened, revealing a scruffy, blond man with a long, tan coat who looked even more exhausted than Ella felt.

“Here’s...Johnny,” Lucifer said with a bark of laughter.

The man held up both middle fingers and rolled his eyes. “Piss off, Morningstar.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to [violent_ends](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends) for translating the Italian!
> 
> Additional warnings: dissociation, losing control of one's body


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt(!): Chained to a bed
> 
> Additional warnings are in the end notes.

“John Constantine,” the man said, walking over and holding out his hand as Ella and Lucifer stood.

“Um. Ella. Lopez.” She shook his hand. He looked less like an exorcist and more like he should be selling her a vacuum that didn’t work. Or maybe playing drums in a _Sex Pistols_ cover band or one of the guys who lived under the overpass that her church fed on weekends.

He reached into the pocket of his dusty, ratty coat and pulled out, of all things, a crisp, white business card. Before Ella could reach up, Lucifer plucked it out of his hand and scoffed.

“‘Master of the dark arts’? What twaddle is this?”

The man glared and slapped his duffel bag down on the coffee table, scattering takeout containers and rumpled napkins. “It also says, if you’ll notice, ‘exorcist’, which I rather think is why you called me.”

“Hmf,” Lucifer said flatly.

_Even he doesn’t trust the guy he called. This is all hopeless. You might as well—_ Ella bit her lip and forced the voices away, for the moment, at least.

Constantine took a moment from dumping out a wild assortment of holy symbols, dog-eared books, and what appeared to be the leftovers of a tragic RadioShack explosion, and said, _“You_ were the one who called me.”

“I called you because you _owe_ me.”

He threw his hands up. “After Maze—“

_“After Maze._ What tosh. I seem to recall a certain _trip_ I helped you on.”

“That was to save your own sorry hide as well.”

_”I_ would have been fine, thank you _very_ much.”

“You—“

“Um. Guys?” Ella looked between them. “Murderer...in my head, so maybe we could...”

“Right.” Lucifer glanced at her apologetically, nodded, then looked back at Constantine sternly. “I will owe you. _One_ favor. But don’t push it.”

Constantine rolled his eyes and got down to business, pulling out a rosary. He glanced up at the ceiling and crossed himself. Lucifer snorted but didn’t comment. He ignored him and asked, “Would you mind sitting down, Ella?”

“Uh, just here?”

“That’s fine, love. Just going to try something here.” He cracked his knuckles and held up the rosary, reaching out—slowly—with his other hand to lightly touch her shoulder. “I'm addressing the spirit inside—”

“Collin St. Martin,” Lucifer provided, head apparently back in the game.

“Collin St. Martin,” Constantine repeated. “In the name of the Creator, you are hereby commanded to leave this place!”

Ella half expected the wind to blow, the lights to flicker, ominous chanting to come out of nowhere—the full exorcism experience she’d seen in movies. But nothing happened at all.

She frowned, glancing at the hand on her shoulder, at the rosary beads slowly swaying back and forth in front of her face. “Um. Was something supposed to...?”

“Shit,” Constantine said.

“I could have done _that,”_ Lucifer said hotly. “Honestly.”

Constantine ignored him, dropped the rosary back on the table, and picked up a silver amulet of a hand with an eye in the center of the palm, offset by a pale blue stone. “By El Shaddai, leave this woman and be gone from this place.”

_Fuck off,_ a voice in Ella’s head said almost lazily. But nothing else happened.

He cursed under his breath, then took a step back and pulled out a stick of incense. Lighting it with a zippo from his pocket, he blew the flame out and waved it around in a deliberate pattern, chanting something that sounded like Hindi.

“ॐ तत्पुरुषाय विद्महे महादेवाय धीमहि तन्नो रुद्रः प्रचोदयात ।”

He dropped the incense on the marble floor, reaching back to retrieve a flask. He unscrewed the top, repeated the mantra, and poured a small amount of water into his cupped palm. He flicked it at Ella as he repeated the mantra for a third time, and she blinked and sputtered.

The voices in her head laughed.

“Alright, fine, you right bastard,” he muttered, setting the flask back on the table. “How about this? Sancte Michael Archangele—”

“Michael, _really?”_

“—defende nos in proelio,” Constantine continued, ignoring Lucifer. “Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli—”

Lucifer scoffed again.

_“—esto praesidium,”_ Constantine said louder. He continued to recite the prayer, one that Ella recognized from her grandmother. It had been spoken at the end of Mass before Ella was born, and sometimes her grandmother would still mutter it under her breath.

_“Latin,”_ Lucifer muttered darkly.

“—in infernum detrude. Amen,” Constantine finished. He frowned down at Ella. _“Nothing?”_

“Sorry!” she squeaked. _Look at you, Ella, can’t even do an exorcism right._ She sighed and slumped back into the couch.

“Right.” Constantine clapped his hands. “We’ve got a stubborn bugger. Got to pull out the big guns.” He looked over at Lucifer. “Have you got flour?”

* * *

The piano was pushed toward the bar, the couches were shoved against the wall, and Constantine knelt on black marble, applying a paste made from flour, water, and some herbs from a ratty paper packet onto the floor with his fingers.

“You see, the thing is,” he told the floor as he painted arcane symbols around the edge of the large circle he’d already sketched out, “our boy Collin is _not,_ as it turns out, a damned soul.”

“Th-the murderer wasn’t going to Hell?” Ella asked blankly. _Guilt,_ Lucifer had said. Maybe he didn’t feel guilty enough. _How guilty do you have to feel to go to Hell?_ “So he was...going to heaven? Or...” Did purgatory exist? Were there other options?

“I think what Johnny here means is he hadn’t yet been...let’s call it, ‘earmarked for damnation,’” Lucifer said, surveying the progress on the ritual circle. “It’s _mainly_ an automatic process, but sometimes a spanner gums up the works. Thus, ghosts.”

“So—” She shook her head, trying to calm her brain down. “So my ghost from when I was a kid...might be real?”

“It’s possible.” He frowned. “My sister, Azrael, _ought_ to be keeping it from happening. But clearly, she’s missed things.”

“This sort of thing has been happening more and more,” Constantine said, standing. “It’s the rising darkness.“

“Bollocks to your rising darkness,” Lucifer scoffed.

Constantine blinked. “The worlds almost ended!”

“But they didn’t, did they? Thanks in no small part to _moi.”_

“You were barely involved.”

“I was plenty involved.” Lucifer waved his hand dismissively. “It’s all still here, isn’t it?”

“Uh,” Ella said. “Is-is the world ending?” How was this her life now?

“Oh, no, no, that’s all done with. Don’t you worry, Miss Lopez,” Lucifer said, eyes flitting to Constantine. “Johnny here will simply evict your dodgy lodger and pop him off down to Hell where he belongs.”

“That’s right,” Constantine said, wiping his hands off on the hem of his coat. “Two shakes, and you can say sayonara to your unfortunate passenger.”

Lucifer chuckled, and his grin turned cutting as he added, “And he’d better _hope_ I never go back to Hell to visit.”

A frisson of fear shivered up Ella’s spine, and she wondered if it had come from her or from the ghost possessing her. But it passed as quickly as it came, and Constantine was back in serious mode, setting a chair in the middle of the circle of flour-paste-stuff and having her sit in it.

“This is...kind of weird,” she told Lucifer as he held her hand to help her across the gap. As if everything that had happened in the last month hadn’t been even weirder.

“I’m no expert,” he admitted as she sat, “but from what I’ve gathered, the ritual is more about intention than anything else.” He frowned and glanced over at Constantine, who was burning a different kind of incense while scowling at a book spread out on the bar and muttering to himself. “Despite appearances, and my…”

“Constant put downs?”

He dipped his head and lowered his voice. “Yes. That. But I assure you John Constantine is eminently capable and stubborn beyond belief. He will free you of this pesky poltergeist or die trying. And he doesn’t die easy.”

“Okay. Okay.” She could do this. _You can’t._ She _could._ “This will work, and everything will be fine.”

“Everything _will_ be fine,” Lucifer said, oddly serious, like him saying it made it a fact of reality. He looked back at Constantine, who now appeared to be cursing at the sun for...some reason, and added with a put-on sigh, “Only for you, Miss Lopez.”

He stepped out of the circle, and they were back in it.

“I call to Shamash,” Constantine began, dropping bits of smoking incense around the circle before turning toward the balcony and the not-quite-visible rising sun, “lord of light and judge over the underworld, heed my voice and listen to my words.”

Even Lucifer wasn’t snarking now, standing a few feet away watching the proceedings solemnly. She almost wished he would crack a joke to break the tension.

Constantine ducked off to read from the book again and pick up a mason jar he’d found somewhere behind the bar. “I adjure you and bid you to free the entity inhabiting Ella Lopez and send it where it rightly belongs.”

Ella expected the floor to shake, electronics to explode, or maybe a long, distant, drawn out scream. Instead, nothing seemed to be happening, still, except that the voices in her head were strangely quiet. And not in the way that she’d managed to bury them, but almost like they were scared.

“I...I think it’s working?” she whispered, afraid to hope. But she was Ella Lopez. Hope was what she did. Some mean jerk of a ghost wasn’t going to change that.

Lucifer clasped his hands together excitedly, but Constantine simply added, words oddly stilted, “Remnant of Collin St. Martin, flee this woman, body, spirit, and soul, and flee this place, this plane, this _world.”_

“The underworld calls to you…” He was still speaking, but a wave crashed over Ella and she could barely hear him. The voices in her head, so quiet a moment ago, were loud again, loud enough her head began to pound. She reached up, rubbing at her forehead, at the lights flashing behind her closed eyes. _Stop it,_ they chanted. _Make it stop. Make it go away._

“Shut up!” she shouted, clutching at her head.

“...may you be cursed and sealed and bound— _Shit._ Lucifer, give me your ring.”

“What do you want with—?”

“Now!”

_He’s tryin’ to hurt us,_ Collin whispered, and she knew it was him now, the accent distinctly Texas. And desperate. _He’s tryin’ to send us away. He’s gonna kill us._ She rocked back and forth, hearing the chair legs creak. _Not us, you,_ she thought back. _He’s going to send_ you _where you belong._

But nothing she tried stopped his voice, so much louder than Constantine’s, than her own. _He’s gonna kill us!_ Collin shouted. _You have to stop him!_ he screamed. And then, brash and bright and so loud it rattled her teeth, _MAKE IT STOP!_

She was standing, but she hadn’t told her muscles to move. She shouted at her body to stop, but she couldn’t make her lips part. _Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop!_ Her body took a step forward, and she tried to resist, tried to make her legs go limp. The next step dragged her foot through the lines of the ritual circle. Another step, slower this time but still closer. _Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it STOP!_

Constantine was still chanting, watching her. Lucifer made to leap forward, but he put his hand out. “Almost got the little pissant,” he said through gritted teeth, holding the ring in front of him like a talisman. “By the power of the sun and moon, by the stars and the Lightbringer, _leave her.”_

_He’s gonna kill us. He’s gonna send us down to Hell. Stop him. Stop him. Stop him!_

Another step, and Constantine took a step back. Another, and Lucifer slowly circled, blocking any path toward the balcony. A stumbling threeway dance, or maybe planets in a strange orbit, held together by nothing more than inertia and gravity.

“Flee! Begone! Shove off, already!”

_Kill him. Kill him. Kill him._

Another step.

Constantine raised the mason jar. “Let the spirit fill the vessel. Let the living soul be freed.”

_Don’t let him send me away!_

Another step, and she was close enough to look up at Constantine, to see the sweat on his brow and the determination in his eyes. He made to throw the jar to the floor, but her hand darted out and caught his wrist. His eyes widened, and her other hand wrenched the jar away from him, throwing it behind her.

“Ella?”

“Miss Lopez?”

She would have given anything she had— _everything_ she had—to say one single word. To tell them, _Stop me;_ to whisper, _Don’t._ She clawed at the inside of her skin, frozen, heart beating out of her chest. She hadn’t felt in control of herself in weeks, but _this_ was so much worse. Her hands drifted slowly to the lapels of Constantine’s coat, like she might just be taking a breath. Reaching out for something to hold on to. She felt her face pull into something soft and apologetic, and the sensation made her sick. But she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t do anything but watch through eyes she didn’t control as his expression lost some of its fear.

“I’m sorry,” a mouth that was no longer hers said, and the hands she didn’t control crept up his chest, around his throat, and squeezed.

* * *

The car wreck hadn’t been anyone’s fault, really. Detroit winters were always icy, people always drove a little too fast on roads that weren’t ever quite as well maintained as they should have been, and no one’s attention could _always_ be one hundred percent. Theirs hadn’t been the first car to go, either—it had cascaded like dominoes knocked over by an impatient kid, first one rear-ending another, then a series of increasingly chaotic wrecks until a truck smashed into their bumper and they spun out. Hard.

Not that Ella had seen any of this. She’d been reading, head stuck in a book like it almost always was. She could still remember staring at the page—” _You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't”_ —while the car whipped around and around until she could see nothing at all. Could feel nothing but the uncontrolled, careening weight beneath her; could hear nothing but the screeching of metal and the breaking of glass.

Her dad had been knocked cold, and so had Ricardo, barely out of booster seats. The official report said her mom died on impact, Ella had learned, eventually. It was relayed in an almost relieved manner. _Thank God she didn’t suffer,_ adults whispered to each other at the funeral, where her face was numb from crying. _Bless the lord she didn’t linger._ Not like Dad and all the problems with his spine.

But the official report was wrong. The doctors were wrong. The adults at the funeral were wrong. _Everyone_ had been wrong, and only Ella knew it. Because she had been awake, somehow—through the whiplash, through the shower of glass, through the blood spattering the pages of the book—and she had seen.

It was always quiet in this memory, after the car had finally lurched to a halt against a concrete barricade. Almost peaceful. As still as the grave, she’d later think, when she let herself think about it at all. There were no sirens there, though she knew there must have been, no steel being wrenched aside, no more glass shattering. There was only the soft sound of the snow that had hidden the ice on the road, drifting to the asphalt idly, unaware of the devastation it had caused.

Ella had been on the passenger side, opposite where the car had slammed into the concrete. The windscreen was caved in, sprinkled with frost and spiderweb cracks. The metal of the driver’s side door had crumpled like a pop can. The dash had been driven forward by the impact, pinning her mom between the steering wheel and the seat. And in those incongruously silent moments after the car had finally stopped moving, Mom had stared at her as she gasped for breath.

Her neck was twisted at a horrible angle, the seat belt cutting into her. Her face had turned pale, then red, then purple. Her eyes had bulged as she spat blood, trying to speak. Failing. Her nostrils flared, but she found no air to fill her crushed chest. Later, Ella would say she remembered nothing, and everyone believed her. _It’s good,_ they would say. _You aren’t supposed to remember things like that._ But she did. She couldn’t stop.

Constantine’s face turned pale, then red, as Ella’s hands squeezed harder. They were small—too small to wrap around his neck entirely—but Collin clearly knew what he was doing. Her muscles burned as adrenaline flooded her body and strength she shouldn’t have been able to access filled her. All along her arms and down her shoulders and back, muscle fibers pulled and tore. The pain flashed red-hot, then white as her hands kept tightening. She couldn’t pull away from the agony of it, no longer in control of her body. But she could barely feel the ache compared to the horror of eyes bulging, of nostrils working furiously, unable to pull in air.

She was going to kill someone. _Another_ someone. John Constantine, those three people in the church...who else? Had that other dream—the chasing, the falling, the screaming—been real too? All that lost time...what might she have done? How many had died by her hand, if not by her choice? Would she ever know their names?

Her fingers tightened even further, and Constantine made a horrible noise, trying to knock her back. But her feet dug in, and her ghost seemed unbothered by the bruises he raised on her arms and side. She tried to close her eyes, finally resigned, but even that was taken from her. She had no choice but to watch as he slowly…

“That’s enough of that,” Lucifer said from behind her. Hands caught at hers, and strong thumbs pressed into a spot at the base of her palms. Pain shot through her, but she was glad of it when her fingers went slack. They tried to scramble for purchase again, but it wasn’t enough. She felt her body being pulled away from Constantine. She willed it to go slack, but instead it fought back, striking out at anything it could reach.

But Lucifer didn’t let her go, only wrapped her further in another twisted version of a hug. Her arm elbowed him in the stomach, her heel snapped up between his legs, but he didn’t pull away or loosen his grip.

_Kill him. Stop him. Get off._ “Get _off!”_ The words left her tongue without permission. She tried to seal her lips shut, but she was powerless. “Get off me!” not-her shouted again, limbs flailing. “Get your goddamn hands off me, you son of a bitch.” It was easy to get swept up in the current of her body and her words, even as her mind rebelled in all the ways it could. It was _so_ easy for her own thoughts to be drowned out entirely, and for her to drift, untethered, alone.

But Lucifer’s voice was in her ear even as her body fought against him. “I apologize, Miss Lopez.” _He_ was apologizing? He shouted something to Constantine she lost in the struggle. Her wrists hurt, her feet scrambled against the floor, and Lucifer lifted her up a few inches.

“Fuck off!”

“If you can hear me, I am so, so sorry for this,” Lucifer said, walking them forward. Her eyes, which had closed at some point, plunging her into a darkness both pleasant and terrifying, popped open. And she could see what was in front of her.

He was making his way up the stone steps that led to his bedroom, holding her securely. Constantine stood beside the bed, a pair of padded cuffs in his hands. Ropes were attached to the corners of the bed that she knew were normally used for Lucifer’s broad and various sexcapades.

“We don’t want you to hurt yourself or someone else,” Lucifer explained apologetically. She’d never heard him this serious. “I’m going to turn you around, now,” he added. Ella felt her muscles brace to try to break away, but all Collin succeeded in doing was decking Lucifer in the face and bruising Ella’s knuckles. He didn’t even blink, expression only worried, not pained. The small part of her brain not freaking out wondered what other devil powers he had.

“I’m going to put you on the bed.” He continued to narrate his and Constantine’s actions as they slipped the cuffs around her wrists and attached them to a bolster on the headboard, ignoring Collin’s outbursts.

It was horrible being unable to move. They could do anything to her. But Lucifer touched her only as much as he had to to keep Collin from escaping to do something _worse,_ and Constantine had a steady, professional manner despite his disheveled air. Their care calmed her fears ever so slightly. They wouldn’t hurt her; Lucifer was her friend, and Constantine knew what he was doing. She clung to that as the rest of her mind filled with panic.

“...need better reagents,” Constantine said, as if from miles away.

“Take this,” Lucifer said with a vague rustling sound. Whatever else he said was lost to the shouting in her brain, more vicious now that her ghost thought he had a reprieve.

The elevator dinged, echoing off the inside of her skull. _See, even the ‘master of the dark arts’ is abandoning you now. Lucifer will be next. Bastard never really cared._

But Lucifer didn’t leave, instead simply sitting at the edge of the bed as her limbs went from actively pulling on the shackles to the occasional jerk. She slowly wrested control of her body back, resting her cheek against the cool pillow. Her head was killing her, even worse than the past few weeks. Collin hadn’t left, but the voices were quiet enough now that she could hear her own shaky breathing.

She slept fitfully, waking to find her panting breaths had left the pillow damp and cold. She shivered, but she couldn’t make herself shift away. It was hard enough to keep Collin from moving her. Eventually—it may have been minutes, or hours, she didn’t know—she managed to pull herself into a sitting position against the headboard. Everything hurt—her hands and wrists and arms and shoulders, her legs where she’d bruised herself, and worst of all her head. Curling up around her ears to stab along the seams of her skull and twist behind her eyes, the headache pounded in the shape of Collin’s continued curses.

“Back with us, Miss Lopez?” Lucifer asked in a terrible approximation of his normal cheerfulness.

“Um,” she said distinctly. A sharp spike was slowly being pushed into her temple, and it was difficult to focus on anything else. Pressure built behind her eyes, along her cheekbones, until it felt like a weight was sitting on her face, slowly crushing her skull.

“Miss… Ella?”

“I’m…” She swallowed reflexively, shivering. “I’m here. I think. At least, I hurt enough that I must be alive.”

“I’m going to free one of your hands, alright?”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good—” Lucifer’s fingertips traced the leather of one cuff, and it popped open. Her hand shot out and smacked into his jaw. “Ow.”

His mouth pulled into a half-smile, and he seemed to settle in. She wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but after a while, Collin seemed to realize he couldn’t get free. The pressure eased again, and she breathed steadily.

“Have some water, love. There you go.” Cool plastic was pressed into her free hand. The crinkling sound echoed in her mind, and she shivered harder. Her eyes weren’t open anymore. When had that happened?

_He’s the Devil. He’s tryin’ to trick you. Poison you._

She no longer had the energy to fight the voices, but she didn’t have the energy to fight Lucifer either. She put the rim of the bottle against her chapped lips and tipped water into her mouth, swallowing shallowly. Slowly the nausea abated, and when a warm hand took the half-full bottle from her, she slumped to the mattress.

Her wrists hurt. A lot.

Fireworks burst behind her eyelids. _You have to get out. You have to escape._ Blood pounded in her ears, her heartbeat shaking her chest, rattling her teeth. _They’re gonna kill me._ She buried her face in the pillow, and the soft fabric against her cheeks made her shiver again. _We’re gonna die!_

“...be right back,” Lucifer said somewhere above her. The mattress flexed as he moved, and she was alone. Wasn’t alone. Was never alone when everything in her head was screaming. Her wrist twisted against the leather, her free hand clawed against the pillow, and her feet kicked out. But she didn’t have the energy to keep it up, and eventually she fell into an undignified pile of limbs, sore, achy, with an angry ghost beating its metaphorical fists against the inside of her skull.

The smell of chicken, of all things, dragged her out of her stupor. She sniffed, shifted, and pulled her head up to look. Lucifer was holding a bowl of soup from...somewhere, since she was pretty sure he didn’t have a kitchen. He rounded the bed and set the steaming bowl on the narrow edge of the bedside table.

She grabbed at the headboard and managed to pull herself into a sitting position again. “Soup?”

He nodded and pulled out a spoon, setting it next to the bowl. “Chicken soup.”

“Right…” Her stomach growled. It had been a while since she’d eaten. Probably. It was hard to tell. It seemed like a bad idea when she barely had control over herself, but hunger didn’t care about her worries. Her mouth was watering. She rearranged her body so she could reach. Collin wasn’t exactly quiet, but it was manageable. For now. She grabbed the spoon and dipped it into the broth. The Devil brought her soup. Right.

“She said it was ‘good for the soul,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean,” Lucifer mused.

Ella fished out a piece of carrot and some celery, carefully bringing the soup up to her mouth. “Oh, _God,”_ she groaned, going for another bite. “That’s amazing.”

Lucifer hummed, sitting on the edge of the bed. “A favor well spent, I think.”

“A favor. Like…”

“‘Deal with the Devil,’ yes.” She’d have to deal with the whole ‘actually the Devil’ thing at some point. Later. Much later. After her brain wasn’t so full of homicidal maniac.

_He’s tryin’ to poison you._

_Shut up._

She stared down at the bowl. “You used a favor...for soup.”

He blinked. “What else would I use it for?

And, well, fair point.

Slowly, Ella started to feel a little better. When she’d gotten most of the soup down, she asked for some advil for her head, and Lucifer went and got it, alongside the water bottle, which she accepted gratefully. Her hands weren’t shaking for once. The healing power of soup. Apparently.

The sun was high in the sky by now, and everything felt almost normal. Sure, Ella was still handcuffed to the headboard. Sure, her brain was still yelling at her. Sure, Lucifer was watching her like he was worried she’d fall apart again. But it was nice to take this moment. The conversation—which mostly involved Lucifer rambling about random topics while she sucked down food—slowly drifted back to more relevant things.

“Yesterday wasn’t the only time I lost,” Ella quietly told the bowl. “What if I...or Collin...did something else?”

“Then we’ll figure it out.”

_You’re just another favor._ “But…”

Lucifer shook his head. “None of this is your fault. Whatever might have happened, I’ll deal with it.” He sighed, clearly uncomfortable with the question. Ella wasn’t exactly comfortable with it either.

“Am I… Do I owe you a favor for all this?” He was the Devil, and she still wasn’t sure how any of this worked. This was a little bit bigger than _soup._

“Absolutely not,” Lucifer said sternly. “Your life is not a favor to me.”

Ella didn’t know what to say to that. She was so tired, too tired for any more gratefulness. The silence threatened to stretch, but all the quiet did was give Collin more opportunities to fill her head with his nastiness. “What about _Reaper?”_ she asked, dragging them back to an earlier, easier topic.

Lucifer scoffed. “Complete twaddle, though I admit Ray Wise looks rather lovely in that s—”

_Smack._

Collin, bored with recent events, it seemed, had regained control of Ella’s arm long enough to fling a spoonful of soup in Lucifer’s face.

“Oh, no, I’m so sorry!”

He sniffed, reached up, and plucked a strand of chicken off his nose. He licked his fingers and smacked his lips. “My, that’s bloody delightful, isn’t it?”

Unable to do anything else, Ella burst out laughing. It had been a long month; it felt nice to laugh. Lucifer joined in before collecting the bowl and spoon and disappearing to the bathroom to wash his face. 

Ella slumped back against the headboard and tried to keep herself in the moment. She could hear the sink running in the bathroom and clung to it, willing it to drown out the doubt. _Anything could have happened. Who knows who all I killed, who all_ we _killed, Ella._

“Stop that,” she admonished him out loud, but he wouldn’t stop, getting louder and louder, voice faster and faster.

_Do you remember chasin’ her?_ Collin asked nastily. _I felt you rattlin’ around in there. We was so close to catchin’ that bitch. So_ close. _Just you and me and the asphalt under our feet. Wasn’t it nice? Wasn’t it_ fun?

“No, it…” Nausea rose. “Stop, _please.”_

_That’s what she said,_ Collin whispered. _No. Please. Stop. Don’t. Beggin’ so nice. Those people in the church...they didn’t have time to squeal and holler._ He took a deep breath with Ella’s lungs, and she collapsed against the sheets again. _It’s so much better when you can take your time._

Ella balled her hands into fists, hard enough her fingernails bit into her palm.

_What’s wrong, Ella?_ Collin crowed. _You spend every day with blood and dead people and murderers. Even your ‘best friend’ is the goddamned Devil. And then you go home and think about it—all those horrible things you see, I wasn’t the one that put them in your head._ Her lips were moving without her permission, spilling the poison into the air. “Maybe all I did was remind you what you really—”

She bit her lip hard enough it bled. The salt and iron pulled her out enough to breathe. She trembled but managed to force herself upright. She was wiping at her mouth when Lucifer came back in.

“You alright?”

She nodded rapidly. “Yep. Yeah. Well, I mean, no. But. I will be.”

“That’s the spirit!” Lucifer said brightly, clapping his hands together.

“Everything will be _okay,_ and when this is over I'm gonna...I'm gonna go home and take a shower,"—and not to wipe blood off her face, but just to feel _clean_ again, and it’d been so _long_ —"and then I'm gonna actually sleep for once this month, and work isn't going to suck, finally, and..." A new energy was filling her, different from the anxiety but still too fast, too frantic, too uncontrolled. "And next weekend, you and me...you and me, buddy, we're gonna go to Vegas and find a casino to get thrown out of, and—"

"Miss Lopez?"

But she couldn't stop the words from falling from her mouth, faster and faster, higher and higher. "It's gonna be so much fun. I used to spend so much time there. _So much._ I know _all_ the best places to hang, and I bet you know tons of places too, sin city, and all—"

"Ella, are you—?"

"Like being drunk but less of a downer, or like...like being high but _way_ less thinking." Her fingers came up to press, hard, against her forehead, the cuffs shaking with the motion. "Bright and loud and _more_ and ev-e-ry-thing. Don't have to listen to your gross brain when you can't hear it. Don't have to be so _reasonable_ all the time. So. Much. Less. _Boring."_ Her heartbeat was so loud in her ears she couldn't hear anything else. She reached out and caught at the headboard, beyond dizzy.

She gasped for air, muscles too tight to take in a breath. Her body shook with the beating of her heart. Lucifer was saying something, maybe, but she couldn't understand. She couldn't hear Collin, couldn't hear her own whispers. She could barely hear herself think at all, and the vibrating silence was so much worse than the grossest thoughts she’d ever had.

She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t _think._ She couldn’t...she couldn’t... "I can’t… I can’t... _._ "

"Just breathe." Lucifer's voice echoed around her buzzing brain. She couldn’t. She couldn’t. She could— "Just like that. Nice and slow."

She breathed and breathed and breathed until finally her mind settled enough for her to focus. Shameful heat burst across her cheeks, even after everything. _Panicking over nothing again?_ her brain mocked, the voices returning just to be the assholes they were. _Like you used to as a kid? Crazy Ella crying and shaking and throwing up. Getting all worked up over nothing,_ Mom would say, before. Before...

"I..." She gasped and stammered, unable to make eye contact in that old, familiar embarrassment.

"It's alright," Lucifer tried to reassure, but words were still slipping from her mouth in a rush.

"I'm sorry. I'm just tired. I'm just— It’s just _so much_ all the time. And usually I’m better at keeping it all in, pretending everything’s okay. That I’m _fine._ But I just… I can’t. I don't—"

"I _understand,_ " he said, voice earnest. Too earnest. Even his cheeks were a little pink now, when she made herself look.

And as soon as it had come, it was gone again, and she was left in the wake of the storm, cold and tired and unable to do anything more than press her cheek against the leather of the headboard, gasping. Like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The last thing she felt before she tumbled into exhausted unconsciousness was an arm slipping carefully around her shoulders. The last thing she heard before vague, confused dreams took her was Lucifer whispering in her ear, “Rest now. I’ll fix this. I swear it.”

And when she woke, minutes or hours or days later—she no longer had the focus or the energy to care—it was to a careful hand on her shoulder, a warm presence beside her, and a grumbling but well-meaning Welshman in the background.

* * *

The descriptions and explanations of what they were going to do washed over Ella in a fog of Constantine lighting candles and Lucifer fretting and pretending not to be. Incense was burned, old, musty books were consulted, symbols were painted on satin sheets, and Lucifer and Constantine bickered like exes with unfinished business—

“This bringing back memories for you, Johnny-boy?”

“Get bent.”

“Mmm...love to, _really,_ but right now Miss Lopez requires our attention. Maybe when we're done we can have some _real_ fun.

“I hate you so much.”

—and all the while, Ella stared blankly up at the ceiling, listening to Collin and his mean jerk chorus chant every horrible thought she’d ever had and some that were the world’s worst original hits.

“The bloody bastard’s going to fight back,” Constantine advised somewhat uselessly as he crouched beside the bed, pressing symbols into a still soft clay pot with a wedge-shaped tool. “Spirits...they’re tricksy fuckers.”

Ella nodded. “What should I do?”

“Try to focus on separating your psyche from the intruder’s presence.” He grunted and seemed to deem the pot acceptable, pulling out his phone. “And if you see a bright light, don’t go towards it.”

She missed when she could be sure that was a joke.

Lucifer was at the bar, filling a glass, and Constantine got up, muttering to himself. She reached out and caught at his hand, trying to ignore the pang she felt when he flinched. She took a deep breath and said, “Don’t uncuff me. Please. No matter what I say.”

“I…”

“No matter what _Lucifer_ says.”

His lip twitched and he glanced toward the living room. “I _can’t._ He’s the _Devil,_ love. He—”

She tugged him closer sharply. “Don’t let me go until you’re _sure_ he’s gone.”

The shadow of some unknown horror passed over his face, and he inhaled slowly before nodding. “I won’t.”

“Okay,” Ella breathed, flopping back to the cushions, letting her eyes fall shut. “Okay.”

“Are we ready?” Lucifer asked, coming up the stairs.

Pages ruffled, and Constantine hummed. “We’re ready.”

* * *

“Let the spirit be drawn into the vessel,” Constantine chanted. “Let the spirit be drawn into the _bloody_ vessel.”

Both of Ella’s hands were cuffed again, her legs tied down to keep her from hurting herself, and Collin pulled against the bindings, yelling insults and curses. She clung to awareness, wishing she could let go, knowing that giving in would only make getting rid of her ghost harder.

_Go away, go away, go away,_ she shouted in her head, trying. _Go away, go away, go—_

“Let the spirit be drawn…”

“Fuck off, you…”

“It’s going to be okay,” Lucifer said softly at her ear. Collin tried to elbow him in the face but missed entirely.

“By the powers of Heaven, of Hell, of Earth—”

“Ella here thinks you’re a joke, you know,” Collin said suddenly with Ella’s voice, low and cruel, changing tack, “chasing that frigid cop lady around all the time. I’d stop wasting my time. She’ll probably ditch you anyways.”

“It’s alright, Miss Lopez. Means it’s working.”

Collin scrunched up Ella’s nose and turned her voice into a sneer. “Even an airhead like Candy couldn’t stand your ass for more than a couple weeks. Has the divorce gone through yet, or are you still clinging to the hope she’ll take you back?”

“He’s getting desperate,” Lucifer said. How far had Collin gone into her memories?

“And that lawyer bitch on the side, huh?” Ella’s lips whistled as she choked back nausea. “Man, she’s got your balls in a—“

“You’re an odious little man, aren’t you, Collin?” Lucifer’s tone couldn’t be more different than it had been a minute ago. He pressed close to the bed and leaned over, looming, smirking at Ella, or past her, somehow. Into whatever corner of her brain Collin had jammed himself. “Just a waste of celestial light scrambling for a last word it will _never_ win before falling down, down, down into the dark.”

“F-fuck you!”

“Oh, what a poet.” Lucifer scoffed. “You aren’t worth the grime on the bottom of Miss Lopez’s shoes.”

“And you’re the _Devil.”_

Lucifer snickered. “So what? You’ll be mine soon anyway.”

Collin barked out a laugh, and the feeling shuddered in Ella’s throat. “Yours?” Her voice was tinged with bravado, but she could feel Collin’s uncertainty. “Why should I be scared of _you?_ Everyone knows your story—lost a fight so bad Daddy kicked you out of an entire kingdom. _Pathetic_.”

Lucifer leaned further forward, crowding Collin, crowding _Ella._ “Watch who you’re calling pathetic, you wretched malfeasant. Stealing bodies to have your little fun. You’re only delaying the inevitable. And the inevitable lasts _forever.”_

“I’ll just find another—”

“You won’t.” A horrible grin slid across his face. “Hell is the only place you’re going. I’ll make sure of it.”

“You… You’re…” Ella could feel Collin’s fear now, could barely feel anything else. Her heart raced, her muscles tensed, but there was nowhere to go.

“If only I had my wings.” Lucifer’s eyes flashed red, and Ella saw hellfire. “I’d fly down myself and have you on my rack until you break.”

A single tear made its solitary way over her cheek and down her chin, leaving a line of moisture that froze her skin. She knew Collin was using her reactions, but it was too much. Lucifer wasn’t talking to her, but he _was,_ staring into her eyes with more malice than she had believed him capable of. _This_ was the Devil. Not Lucifer, not her friend, not anyone she knew.

_He’s going to kill us,_ Collin whispered, and for one, horrible moment she believed him. Lucifer hadn’t noticed the tears, hadn’t noticed that Collin had gone silent. Constantine was still chanting in the background, head in a book. She was alone with nothing but her ghost. Again. _You’ll always be alone. I’m the only one who understands, and they want to send me away. Don’t let them, Ella, Please._

"Please…” The word slipped out, but no one heard. _Just give_ up, _Ella. They never cared about you. Only I care about you. Without me, what do you even have left?_ Weeks she spent not talking to anyone, not really. Not asking for help. _Years_ she’d spent that way, with only the voices for comfort. _It was better that way._

But it wasn’t, was it? It never had been. Every time she’d tried to go it alone, things had only gotten worse. Every time she’d pulled away, believing she was better off, she’d been wrong. So, _so_ wrong.

_He’s not your friend,_ Collin whispered. _He doesn’t care about anything but his own godforsaken pride._ But he did. He brought her coffee and made her playlists and saved her from blood-soaked churches and really, truly cared that she was okay. She forced a breath into her lungs, made her lips part while Collin shouted, and, just a little louder than before, said, _“Please,_ Lucifer.”

His tirade petered out, and shame overtook any amusement. “Ella, are you…?”

She tried to respond, but found her voice choked out. _Oh, no, that’s quite enough of that, darlin’._ Her lips moved without her permission, muttering nonsense, and she couldn’t speak. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she couldn’t see. Her hands tightened into fists, and her back arched, and she could do nothing but ride it out, but _fight._

“Please,” left her mouth again as her body settled, but it wasn’t her word anymore. “ _Please_ let me go,” Collin said weakly, though in her head he was laughing. “He's… I think he's gone now. Please, Lucifer. I-I just want to go home."

Lucifer frowned and glanced at Constantine.

_Don't listen to him,_ Ella screamed in her head even as her mouth formed around the words, "Please, Lucifer. I'm so scared." _He's lying. He's lying. He's lying!_

“Is that it?” Lucifer asked in a low voice. “Is he gone?”

“I...don’t know.” He scratched his head and frowned, flipping through pages rapidly.

“Well, _figure it out,_ Constan _tine.”_ Lucifer threw his hands up. “That’s what I called you for.”

They kept arguing, but Ella’s hearing went in and out. It was getting hard to see again, static encroaching on the edges of her vision. Collin was taking control, pleading with _her_ mouth, forcing tears from the corners of her eyes. Was this what it was like when she lost time before? Would she lose even her consciousness to Collin’s cruelty? And what would happen if she went away and never came back?

Would she become someone else’s dream…?

Drifting...drifting… In and out and in and out and...

Light and color and sound and...light.

Light?

There was a light. In front of her. Pulsing with her heartbeat. Constantine told her to not go toward those, but she was so tired. And it looked _so_ nice. Comforting. Understandable. Maybe Ray-Ray would be there. Maybe Mom would be there. Dad. She knew it was real now, Heaven. And that looked like Heaven, that light. So bright. So pure. Maybe it would be better to…

No. _No._ She wasn’t done with Earth, with _living._ She had brothers to annoy. A grandmother to call on holidays. She had work and tv and the internet. She had donuts and coffee, ComicCon and a new pet fish to replace Marvin. Two, maybe, so they wouldn’t be alone. She had Chloe, didn’t she? And Dan. Even if they had been short with her, even if they hadn’t noticed everything that was wrong, they cared. She knew they cared. And she had Lucifer. She had Lucifer, who had saved her, who was still saving her. She wasn’t alone.

She never had been.

She closed her eyes, stepping away from the light. Or...tried. But Collin still had control, and she couldn’t. Yet her eyelids were moving, trying to twitch closed, stopped not by her ghost but by some outside force. And it was bright. So much brighter than it should have been. Brighter than the sun, burning into her eyes. She and Collin were working together, now, trying to pull away from the light. But they couldn’t...they couldn’t...

A click, and the light was gone, the force was gone, and her eyelids slid shut.

“Her pupils aren’t reacting,” Constantine said somewhere above her. “Hand me the reflex hammer.” A rustle, a _smack,_ a shot of pain up from her knee. Her leg kicked, but even she knew it was too late to be an automatic response. He tested her other leg to the same effect. Part of her was fascinated by the medical implications. Most of her just wanted to sleep for a month.

“Is she…?” That was Lucifer.

Constantine sighed. “I call to the sun and the moon, to Heaven and— Bloody _hell,_ fuck this.” Feet stomped against the floor. A hand grabbed at the headboard beside her hands. “Get out of her, you _arsehole!”_

Something was splashed in her face. Incense was wafted under her nose. The pot was pressed so close she could smell the clay.

“Leave her! Leave her! Leave her!”

“Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!”

But something was different now. Every time Collin tried to pull away from Constantine, Ella pushed forward. Every time his mouth pulled into insult, she muddled his words. He had been in her head for weeks; he’d had no one but her, and now he didn’t even have that. He didn’t have friends, family, anyone who cared. He only had Ella’s voice, Ella’s _body._ He had nothing of his own.

“You’ve got this,” Lucifer encouraged from the sidelines even as her back arched so hard it cracked. Her fingernails pressed into her palms hard enough to mark, but he caught at her hands, holding them open as Constantine continued to chant, to recite, to command the disembodied soul to leave.

Collin grew more and more desperate, biting at her lips until Lucifer pressed a handkerchief between her teeth. Her ghost was making a horrible sound now, like a caged animal, no longer able to form words. Her legs shook, her arms pulled as hard as they could, and her head flopped back into the pillows.

“Almost there,” Constantine said, then, raising his voice, added, “Leave this woman. Leave this place. Go back where you belong!”

And slowly, but somehow all at once, she felt her muscles loosen. They were almost numb from exertion, but if she focused, she could make her toe twitch. Her fingers move. Her eyes blink, _finally._ She breathed steadily, feeling her heartbeat slow. Collin was still shouting in her mind, but her body was hers. She spat out the handkerchief, breathing deeply, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

“Nearly got the bugger, haven’t we?” Constantine asked. She nodded, not quite trusting her voice yet. Lucifer patted her shoulder before retreating to give Constantine room. He sat his book down, cracked his knuckles, and said, “ Let’s get the rest of him, huh?”

Ella had almost expected it to be over in one final, climactic moment. Something almost cinematic. Instead, it was more of a marathon than a sprint. Constantine would recite a few lines, perform some incantation, then check with Ella to see if Collin was gone. His voice, once so loud it drowned out her own, grew quieter and quieter, weaker and weaker, until it was no more forceful than her whispers on a good day. 

She breathed through it as Collin fought with everything he had left, bringing up the car wreck, her dad’s death, her brothers fighting. Nearly being shot stealing cars. Getting threatened outside a half-rate casino. Staring at the big doors of her church back home and turning away. 

But they were _her_ memories, not Collin’s, not anyone else’s. It was her story, to do with what she wanted. She could learn from it, she could forget it, but she chose what she did with it. Collin had no power over those thoughts anymore.

_He’s goin’ to kill me,_ Collin whispered.

_You’re already dead,_ she told him.

_He’s goin’ to send me to Hell._

_You were already going._

When the last of her ghost left her mind, it was like breaking the surface of the water after swimming for way too long. Like the snow drifting lazily to the ground, without blood or broken glass. Like the sky opening up and letting down the rain. She took a deep breath and let it all out.

“Welcome back to the world, Miss Lopez,” Lucifer said, smiling softly next to the bed. He made to step forward, but Constantine held up a hand.

“Just to make sure…” he muttered, pulling out the flashlight again. He judged her pupils, “Correct,” and her reflexes, “Decent enough,” before letting Lucifer carefully untie her.

Her wrists still hurt as she rubbed at them. Her arms hurt. Her legs hurt. Her head hurt. Frankly, absolutely everything hurt. She was still bruised and sore and _totally_ exhausted, but she was her. _Only_ her. And her brain wasn’t so loud that she couldn’t think.

“I’ll be in town for a few days, just in case,” Constantine told Lucifer, stuffing books back into his bag. He glanced at Ella, said, “Nice to see you’re not dead,” then headed to the elevator. She watched him leave a little numbly.

“T-thanks…”

He waved a hand at her before stepping inside and hitting the button.

“Not much for casual conversation, that one,” Lucifer said, joining her on the bed and handing her a glass. Scotch again. It seemed his support of water had ended with the dead guy in her head. “He’ll be back. For that favor I owe him, if nothing else.”

She took a drink and rubbed at her forehead. “I’m gonna have a _mondo_ headache later.” She put the glass on the bedside table and let herself fall back into the pillows. “God, it’s been a long day…week…”

“Month,” Lucifer added, lying back next to her.

She looked up at their reflections in the ceiling. “Thanks for…” She didn’t even know what to say, how to explain.

“Of course.” Lucifer looked like he wanted to run away now that she wasn’t in danger. The way he’d acted, she knew he was more than familiar with awful voices that said awful things. With the way minds could be so cruel to their owners. But it wasn’t time for that conversation. It could happen later, after the whole ‘Devil thing’. And she didn’t want him to run away right now.

“Hey, no, I mean it.” She turned her head to look at him. _“Thank you._ I...I’ll never be able to repay you.”

He smiled in a quiet, soft sort of way, and for the first time she saw, not just the Devil, not just her friend, but _Lucifer_ —timeless, tired, and so, so scared to be kind. “You don’t have to.”

She wanted to say more, wanted to thank him, wanted to go in for Ella hugs and eat take-out and watch crappy tv. But all she could manage was falling back to the pillows before she was asleep.

* * *

“Mmf.” _God,_ her head hurt.

Ella dragged herself back to consciousness out of dreams that weren’t exactly pleasant, but weren’t nightmares either to find the sheets pulled up around her shoulders. She kicked off the blankets, sat up, and was halfway through more pain meds and a bottle of water waiting on the bedside table before she realized Lucifer was sitting in the chair in the corner, reading.

“Good...” She glanced back through the windows. “Uh…”

“Evening, I’d say,” Lucifer confirmed, setting the book aside. It was very old and very not in English. It would take a while to reconcile her nigh perpetually silly friend with this new side of Lucifer. Though she supposed during the trip to stabby town, she had gotten a preview. What _was_ that about anyway?

She shook her head, then immediately regretted it. _Later._ “Is, uh… Is everything okay?”

Lucifer nodded, getting up and sitting on the bed again. “I had a chat with Azrael, my sister.”

“And she’s...in charge of souls?”

He nodded again, expression unreadable. “Collin St. Martin has successfully reported to his cell in Hell. He won’t be able to hurt anyone ever again.”

“Oh, thank God.” Ella sagged back to the sheets. Lucifer sniffed, and she amended, “Thank...Satan?”

“Better.” His serious expression held on for only a moment before he cracked a smile. “And you, my dear Ella, are entirely spirit free. Well, except for your own, of course.”

“Yay…” She would have the energy to be enthusiastic later. Peppy!Ella would have to wait. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow would be good.

“Would you like to stay another night?” Lucifer asked. “It’s no trouble.”

“That’s really nice, but I think I just want to go home.” What she wanted to do was sleep more, but she had work tomorrow. She had work tomorrow, and for once this month she was actually looking forward to getting back into it.

Ella actually got to appreciate the shower this time, washing off the sweat and grime that Lucifer assured her was completely normal with exorcisms, though she wondered how much experience he really had. Feeling clean for the first time in weeks, she changed into the clothes Lucifer had found for her—not hers, obviously, but they fit perfectly—and headed to the bar for another glass of water.

She collapsed onto a barstool, still exhausted, and grabbed her phone, noticing a few notifications.

“Ready, Miss Lopez?” Lucifer asked, walking down from the bedroom wearing a new jacket.

“Just a sec,” she said, almost brightly, unlocking the phone. There was a message from Dan, apologizing, and one from Chloe, wondering if she was doing alright and if she needed anything. There was a text from Yousef from Burglary, asking where the report she’d promised him was, and a note from Major Crimes, saying they’d need a presentation for trial as soon as possible, meaning yesterday. She’d have to apologize tomorrow, and the backlog would be twice as bad as it normally was, but she knew she could deal with it.

Jay had texted, saying he was going to be in town next month and wondering if she wanted to get lunch. Ricardo had texted a few hours later, complaining about Jay. That was going to be annoying, but she didn’t have to worry about it for a few weeks, at least. At the bottom of the list, an older notification, one of the ones she had ignored last week.

CALL DOCTOR

She nodded, slipping the phone in her pocket and getting up. Collin hadn’t been her fault, but she hadn’t been doing very well the last few months anyway, had she? She joined Lucifer in the elevator, and he hit the button for the garage. _Call doctor,_ the notification said. _You know,_ she thought to herself as Lucifer began humming under his breath, _I think I will._

She didn’t have to be alone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings: graphic depictions of minor character death (flashback)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


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